Once upon a time, being a hero required courage, selflessness, and an unwavering sense of justice. Not anymore! In the grand theatre of 2025 Dhaka, heroism has been redefined. Forget rescuing people from burning buildings or standing up against oppression — here, all it takes is a little public harassment, some moral policing, and a group of cheerleaders armed with flower garlands.

Take, for instance, our latest protagonist, a humble bookbinder from Dhaka University. His grand act of valour? Berating a young woman for not wearing a veil. A noble quest indeed, policing women's attire in the middle of a university campus. When she dared to resist, he fled — a tactical retreat, of course, because a true hero knows when to make an exit.

The law caught up with him. But fear not, for the modern "knight in shining garlands" had his loyal subjects waiting. As he emerged from his brief sojourn in custody (secured with the princely sum of Tk 1,000), he was met with flowers and adulation, a reception usually reserved for war veterans. Because what's a little harassment in the grander scheme of things? Surely, in a city where daily survival feels like an extreme sport, reminding a woman of her place is the real battle worth fighting.

But he is not alone in this league of extraordinary men. A few days prior, in the quiet lanes of Lalmatia, another crusader — a 60-year-old defender of morality — took upon himself to "discipline" two young women for the crime of smoking. A sin so grievous, so unforgivable, that he did the only rational thing: he and his Justice Society harassed and, some alleged, assaulted them.

In response, there was uproar! Not against him, no, that would be far too predictable. Instead, the discussion swiftly pivoted to whether anyone should be smoking at all. Because in the land of selective outrage, a man attacking women is an unfortunate incident, but a woman holding a cigarette? Now that's a national crisis.

Conservative women, draped in righteousness, even took to the streets in a torch march, because nothing screams progress quite like defending a man's right to enforce his version of morality through violence.

And thus, the rulebook of heroism in 2025-Dhaka takes shape. Harass a woman, and you may just earn yourself a fanbase. Enforce moral order through sheer brute force, and you might just be garlanded at your own victory parade.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the city, families whisper amongst themselves, mothers clutch their daughters' hands a little tighter, and friends text each other to "call when you get home." The real heroes, after all, are not the ones paraded with flowers. They are the ones who quietly endure, who navigate the ever-shifting minefield of public safety, who wonder, just for a moment, if they are next.

Because in Dhaka, the real question is no longer who will stand up against injustice but rather, who dares to?

And if they do, will they be met with justice, or with flowers?

Perhaps the greatest irony is that, in this dystopian theatre of morality, the safest choice is silence. Stay unseen, stay unheard, and maybe — just maybe — you won't become the next lesson in heroism. But silence, too, is a kind of death. The slow suffocation of a society that lets fear take the place of freedom, where the only ones who speak are those with their hands around someone else's throat. And so, the cycle continues, the flowers keep blooming, and the real heroes, the ones we desperately need, remain ghosts in the making.