Review of Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq

The Hindu

15-05-2025

That Banu Mushtaq's anthology Heart Lamp has been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025 is encouraging not only for the author, and translator Deepa Bhasthi, but for Indian regional literature and translation, too. This is a first for a Kannada title. In 2022, Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, won the coveted prize, while in 2023, Perumal Murugan's Pyre, translated from the Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan, was longlisted.
Mushtaq's 12 short stories selected from a vast oeuvre, traverse religion, patriarchy, oppression, gender inequality and violence, vividly capturing the everyday trials and tribulations of Muslim women in Karnataka and South India. But they are also universal; the stories and characters could be found anywhere in India or the world.
Religious and social binds
In the eponymous story 'Heart Lamp', Mehrun, a mother of three, decides to end her life after her husband acquires a second wife. She has endured enough and the 'lamp in Mehrun's heart had been extinguished a long time ago'. She decides to drench herself in kerosene and is ready to light a matchstick when her daughter Salma rushes to her mother with her baby sister and begs her not to make them orphans.
Religion and societal structures are unjust to Muslim women; the author critiques and exposes the hypocrisy of men, including the Muttawalli Saheb (the local religious custodian). The inapt machismo and man's role of 'provider' is apparent from the opening story 'Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal'.
There are women who are strong and take matters into their own hands. In 'Black Cobras', a poor mother, Aashraf, turns to the Muttawalli for succour after her errant husband abandons her and their children for a younger wife, but to no avail. While Aashraf remains helpless, the women in the village, like cobras, spew venom on the Muttawalli.
When he is walking home, a woman flings a stone towards him shouting, 'A dog, just a dog.' Another yells: 'Nothing good will come your way… may black cobras coil themselves around you.' When the Muttawalli reaches home, his wife delivers the coup de grace.
Question of agency
Faith and inhumanity form the crux of 'Red Lungi'. Razia, who has to manage 18 children during the summer vacations, decides the only way to ensure peace in the house is to have the boys circumcised. Even the poor families in the village are told to bring their sons for circumcision at a planned mass event.
Strangely, the boys from poor families who were circumcised in the traditional, old-fashioned way, recover quickly, while those from Razia's family who were anaesthetised take a longer time. 'If there are people to help the rich, the poor have God,' grumbles Razia.
Men are also prone to suffering; like Yusuf, who is torn between his widowed mother and a belligerent wife in 'A Decision of the Heart'. Yusuf decides to get his 50-year-old mother married to spite his wife.
An amusing story 'The Arabic Teacher and Gobi Manchuri' talks about a young tutor who holds Arabic classes for girls with the aim of finding a suitable bride for himself, someone who must know how to make his favourite dish. He succeeds in finding his 'dream girl' but life after marriage is something else.
The suffering of women and their lack of, or limited, agency coupled with the monotonous theme of the stories do make the reader feel dreary; equally, it engenders admiration for the author and her ability to write realistic stories, rendered with profound observations, feeling, irony and dry humour.
The collection is rounded off with 'Be a Woman Once, Oh Lord', a fitting finale, questioning God, daring God. 'If you were to build the world again, to create males and females again, do not be like an inexperienced potter. Come to earth as a woman, Prabhu! Be a woman once, Oh Lord!'
Nod to regional literature
As a lawyer, activist and writer, Mushtaq founded her writing in the Bandaya Sahitya movement of the 1970s and 80s which started as a protest against the hegemony of upper caste and mostly male-led writing. The movement urged women, Dalits and other social and religious minorities to tell stories from within their own lived experiences, and in the Kannada they spoke.
The stories in this collection were published originally in Kannada between 1990 and 2023. Translator Bhasthi has endeavored to retain the essence of the original text, transliterating certain words and deliberately not using italics for Kannada, Urdu or Arabic words that remain untranslated in English.
I cannot end without highlighting what the Booker judges said about the book: '... At its heart, Heart Lamp returns us to the true, great pleasures of reading: solid storytelling, unforgettable characters, vivid dialogue, tensions simmering under the surface, and a surprise at each turn.'
The reviewer is a Bengaluru-based independent journalist.
Heart Lamp Banu Mushtaq, trs Deepa Bhasthi Penguin ₹399