Identity Crisis in Shahidul Zahir’s Story ‘Indur-Bilai Khela’: A Critical Representation of the Conception of Power and Liberty through Metaphor and Coercion

Abstract

Dolu Nodir Hawa O Onyanya Golpo (2004) is an acclaimed work by Shahidul Zahir (1953- 2008). It is a short story collection and contains seven stories. Among these stories, Indur-Bilai Khela (2002) is a story that depicts human imagery of modern Dhaka, concurrent political reality, and identity crisis of citizens through connecting incidents from liberation war of Bangladesh with the political incidents that are taking place in twenty first century, in a given context. Zahir interwoven peoples of two different realities firstly, those were victim of liberation war and secondly, peoples living in same locality in current time and by doing this, he describes the crisis of identity in different occasions. The name of this story is a metaphor that shows some kind of crucial game between hunters and victims. This metaphorical name of the story gives a new meaning to its reader by using typical imagery of cat and rat. We use Paul Ricoeur to understand metaphor and meaning making in Shahidul Zahir’s story. He was a modern writer and connected his idea of identity with the idea of oppression and liberty. To understand him, Isaiah Berlin’s ideas on negative liberty are very crucial, and in this paper we used Berlin too along with Ricoeur to understand Zahir. Shahidul Zahir created metaphors in his story through the medium of language. There are two sides of the power he shows in his writing. His metaphor is built on the interrelation of these two sides of the power that by defaults illustrates identity and related crisis of citizens of ‘‘Bhuter Gali” (A typical street of Dhaka). To create the metaphor Zahir adopted a structure of the story that is interconnected yet split in its narrative.