Ratan K Samadder

Black Ants and White Pigeons Ratan K Samadder

Black Ants and White Pigeons is a story of the effect of another story. It's a story of a family or of a country that has gone through a drastic change and ultimately becomes a part of history. Sabiha, an eight-year-old schoolgirl, tells her father a story about a particular type of ants. It is one of the many stories the kids, unaware of the humiliating nature of those, tell each other in the school. It shocks Azad. He advises his daughter why it is bad and why she and her friends should stop sharing it at all. Sabiha understands it, but the story does not leave Azad. It makes him think about the changes the country has gone through since the partition (India-Pakistan). He contemplates the differences in childhood between his generation and Sabiha's. The country goes on changing and it affects people's way of life. Unlike many others, Azad fights, futilely though. One day he finds himself alone - his daughter abandoned, his son untraceable, presumably joins a terrorist organization, and his wife gone. The very story about the ants strikes Azad with its final blow then. He confuses over the past, present, and future. His imagination and reality get mingled. Gradually it engulfs him completely, and Azad lives the life as it comes (or as the story about the ants drives him?). A time comes, when it is not a story anymore, Azad or his family becomes a part of history. This epic tale is based loosely on the effect of Islamic radicalization on individual and family level. It also tries to tell how Bangladesh, a secular country during its birth, has turned gradually into a country of persistent minority oppressions and eventually a death-valley to the secularists.