It’s dark, hits with shocking impact and ensures the impact stays with a final blow that makes you do a double take. You see it coming even as you don’t, and that’s what made Bewa Honay Sae Pehlay trend on X/twitter some days ago. Because, it said what everybody knows but nobody wants to speak out loud.
It is reported that 20 million Pakistanis attempt to access p**n sites daily, not us stating what many whisper, this statistic was reported by one of many media portals who take assistance from Google trends – Arab News
And while the short film might not have exactly hit the ‘viral views’ mark when it aired early in 2025, the content trended earlier this year thanks to a sharp viewer who must have accidentally tripped upon a scene – Talat, a middle-aged housewife played by Saba Hameed, was berating her husband for spending so much time in the toilet, and upon checking his phone, disovered some open tabs with ‘suss’ urls – you guess which ones. Psst, if you’re one of the 20 million Pakistanis cited above or, you happen to know one, you know who you are – a locked phone, a vpn, and a prolonged bathroom visit – bas, that’s all we need to add three and three together – you know we’re talking about the 4 letter word we mentioned above with well-placed asterisks and a lot of people nodding their heads in agreement – yes, that’s a favourite Pakistani pastime (they say, not us), but don’t we all know it?
Well, we might know it, but there’s more to the drama than just that one scene. Amin, the culprit, or husband in question, soon passes away (in suspicious circumstances), but who stays behind is a widow who eventually realizes that perhaps she’s better off widowed than married to a man who had a roving eye, flirtatious habits and a liking for the uninhibited watch on online platforms that reveal a deep, dark world of guilty pleasures and more.
While the short film, penned astutely by none other than the pen of Faseeh Bari Khan of Ghissi Pitti Mohabbat and Tum Larkay Bhi Na, along with notable performances, especially from Saba Hameed, the widow in question and Sana Askari, her niece, playing Nazli, the focus shifted all too soon from a national past time that apparently dominates Pakistani Google Search bars to flirtatious husbands who are a pain to live with and better off in the grave than above it.
The story titled, Bewa Honay Se Pehlay, is a dark satire on the state of married women in our society who have to put up with the facade of happily married, or merely married, well, because that is an acceptable state of being in our society, when in reality, women after marriage have more freedom, and are rid of all the extra baggage men like Amin make them shoulder.
One wanted the drama albeit it was a short film, to stick to the topic – watching p**n in Pakistan – a national obsession, they say, because there’s so much to unpack there? And why this habit has taken root not just amongst our youth but amongst adult, married men too. Perhaps they carried it from their past, perhaps it once opened a world of information for them when none was forthcoming from trusted sources – e.g. s*x education at home or in schools – still frowned upon in society, (side note: Pakistan has a potential population explosion problem on the radar), or perhaps, it just became a way to fulfill a void when young people did not have access to relationships or marriage at the right time in life.
Also, where these sites and videos open a world of confusion and let’s call it, adventure for the unschooled – the forbidden fruit Adam was told to steer clear off – there are in fact, no counter-sites offering awareness, mentoring or a healthy outlet for youth stuck in a quagmire of economic, academic and social struggles where a prepaid simcard and affordable mobile phone is an easy and secretive connection to the forbidden world and a reprieve from the realities of the daily grind.
Fair to say, in western societies, p**n is also a reality but one wonders that although it may be widespread in absolute numbers, perhaps it forms a smaller percentage of the overall population. Not just because the youth there have access to relationships, but also because they have access to playgrounds, football fields, healthy activities that keep young adults engaged in the community as well as easy and mandatory access to s*x education that might help them cross the impressionable teens when hormones are at their most vulnerable – if nothing more than providing awareness, at least the programs allow young people access to information which is not considered taboo.
Every young man and woman who enters adulthood needs education about the changes they experience, physically, psychologically and emotionally. When questions go unaddressed, young people seek answers wherever they can and often, the wrong answers are faster (and easier) to access. P**n websites not only provide easy access to a taboo world but they can also lead to addictive habits that stay with a person way past their teen years.
The result – these people stay unsatisfied in their marital relationships because perception (onscreen) and what they experience in real life are starkly different from each other. Hence the internet and Facebook is cluttered with despondent (and anonymous) Pakistani housewives (just like Talat in Bewa Honay Se Pehlay), seeking online advice on how to address the situation when her husband prefers to watch p**n videos alone rather than spend time with her.
Bewa Honay Sae Pehlay has stirred the pot in a society that needs to address this problem sooner rather than later and while it is a start, more needs to be said to normalize the conversation on a topic that many women hesitate to say out loud yet even more are quietly living with every day.
To get you started, here’s an initiative that aims to address reproductive education and sexual health in young adults.
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Bewa Honay Sae Pehly is a short film directed by Mazhar Moin, penned by Faseeh Bari Khan with a cast featuring Saba Hameed, Sana Askari, Raza Zaidi, Hafsa Butt among others. It is available for viewing on YouTube.
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