Borders, Boundaries, Belongingness and orphans of the storm: A critical analyses of Selina Hossain’s short story ‘The Return’

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to critically analyse Selina Hossain’s short story ‘The Return’ which
was published in ‘LOOKING BACK THE 1947 PARTITION OF INDIA 70 YEARS ON’.
The Partition stories have been vital to understand the complexity of the human life in those
tangled and troubled times. Thus, the Partition Stories reflect the Partition comprehensively
in all its totality, reality, and variety. They [the partition stories] are rather witnesses to a
period in which we fell out of a human world of languages, customs, rituals and prayers into
a bestial world of hatred, rage, self-interest and frenzy (partition). The Return is the story of a
15 years old girl, Rafeza. Her father died during partition riots in Bangladesh and her mother
in the prison of India, where she could not get proper treatment. This story throws light on the
journey of Rafeza from Bangladesh to India, her life in prison and her journey from India to
Bangladesh. This paper is an attempt to show how borders, boundaries and belongingness
affected the life of orphans like Rafeza during and after partition and how a persons’ whole
existence and life was put in and determined by a passport