THE TRAILBLAZER

By S. M. Shahrukh · Issue 01, 2025

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you wake up in the morning, having left the previous day behind into the past, you look at a new day, a new beginning, but you feel harried because of something that had happened the night past. The world has spun a few hours and you get, even if for a split second, a new lease of life. You feel a foreboding instead of the goodness the new is supposed to bring. The moment you meet someone the newness rubs off and you feel a customary choking.

During the course of the day you meet more and more people and the asphyxiation gets worse. You have to walk a line; any deviation will cause the fingers pressing harder on your throat. The fingers are stronger in a society that has chosen to do everything for the good of the collective, what fancy your mind holds has no room. The good of the collective cannot be sacrificed at the altar of your independent thought. The brotherhood in a society can only be maintained by this suppression of individuality and having a model of a perfect, nay flawless society in sight. You feel the choking give you a narcotic like calmness after a while and you go on.

In a society closed thus a heavy toll needs to be paid by the individual and at the end of the day, when you are once again alone, in the darkness of the night when your vision is limited, you feel the fingers on your throat letting go, a bit. You then wonder why is it that you have to pay such a high price to maintain the rosy picture of the whole.

You lower your eyelids, now heavy, you are drifting into sleep, that daily death of us all; your mind still in action wanting to rebel.

Before the view is totally blocked you make promises that you will stare back when stared at, you will deliberately deviate from toeing the line because it feels good, you will not listen to the music universally accepted, you will not read only those books deemed good for reading, you will go to see a French movie with subtitles in an empty theater (you have often wondered how the theater breaks even), you will……

You are swept into the realm of sleep. You wake up and the rebellious feelings of the previous night gush to your head. You feel ashamed and hope that no one is noticing the sudden redness on your cheeks. You hurry to your designated position in the beeline as a person shows excess eagerness to suppress the lethargy shown at a previous time. With the day passing you feel the drug making your nerves calmer.

You wonder, at times, if one day you will not feel ashamed in the morning, not need the drug of drudgery and keep the promises you made the night before.

Dhaka, 9th December 2013.