Guided by the light: A woman writer on sisterhood and modernity in the Booker-winning ‘Heart Lamp'

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24-05-2025

Where does the invisible woman's power hide?
In a context where the feminine is demeaned, when the power of women's sexuality, compassion, ambition or perseverance does not fully belong to them, how do we recognise their individual or collective pain?
Among the lower middle class, what label can a woman wear to keep herself safe?
Has anyone studied the power-dynamics of the disconnected Muslim sisterhood?
Why have I not included a certain layer of Muslim women in my personal idea of sisterhood? Is it my fear of being misunderstood, or is it my biased projections and judgements?
These were some of the questions which were punching through my heart as I read Banu Mushtaq's Heart Lamp, the winner of this year's International Booker Prize.
I won't lie. I did not pick up Heart Lamp until I saw it on the 2025 prize longlist. After all, how many works of translation, and that too of regional authors, are on my post-colonised mind's reading list? It was when I read through all the synopses on the longlist that Heart Lamp, stood out for very specific reasons. Not only do I live in South India where the stories are based, but the book also made me question my own awareness, prejudices and proud individuality.
Who is a modern woman?
The dictionary definition of 'modern' is someone who advocates and practices a departure from traditional and conventional values. A modern woman is defined as someone who is independent, has choices and agency, believes in gender equality, and is not a stereotype. I was raised in a Muslim household, and carry a name which immediately identifies me by religion. I have spent much of my life stripping off all superficial and deeper inner signs and symbols from my life. I have turned more towards philosophies that I believe will mark a more inclusive future, a world that lives for the good of humanity.
I, who identify strongly as a modern woman, found cracks and hypocrisies in my chosen belief system as I read the short stories of Heart Lamp. Here, women were also raised in Muslim households, except that they had held or were made to hold on to religion as their primary identity; they were born with stunted expectations of life, living under the thumb of the perpetual patriarchy where neither girlhood, nor any other stages of womanhood guarantee happiness or stability.
I paused a lot while reading. Hadn't I heard these stories before? While growing up in Bangladesh, weren't these the odd (at times juicy) and (often) sad snippets that dropped like crumbs in my grandmother and mother's late afternoon tea hour? The maid's husband dyed his hair black and got remarried; her brothers, too, had turned their backs and quietly divvied up shares of properties, leaving nothing for her; even the head Moulavi was unable to sort out the matter after the maid visited him a dozen times for justice.
She was thinking of going to the police but her underage daughter got a marriage proposal and was then hurriedly married off. The teenager's husband was remarrying since his first wife had only given birth to girls. To ensure a boy from her underage daughter's womb, our maid had the Qur'an read cover-to-cover by the Maulvis at the mosque.
Didn't I have the sweets which were given to me in a shaky saucer by our broken-faced, husband-less anaemic maid, when the Qu'ran khatam took place? Didn't I expect more misery to follow her and her daughter's life, simply because I had common sense, and common sense told me to disengage, distance and know that the lives of such people will never improve, ruled by men's lust and hunger, the cycle will spin unbreakably.
Heart Lamp brought me back to those moments, the ones I disassociate with, the ones I still ignore when I look around on the streets. The women in purdah, somehow marked as weaker, assuming they are not the keepers of their own lives. Their purdah tells the world to look away from their extremely noticeable presence, draped in metres of darkness so that those individuals can remain utterly invisible.
Non- purdah women rarely engage with the person under the cloak, afraid perhaps of what we might find if we looked closely and even more afraid of relating to their pain. I, too, was fine with them remaining invisible, until someone like Banu Mushtaq came along to sensitively, patiently, whole-heartedly engage and create the details of the lower middle-class and middle-class Muslim women's griefs and sanities, their material and immaterial assets and threats, their lacks and fears, and the universality of their agony.
In the 12 stories by Banu Mushtaq, we find accidental Cinderellas whose fancy shoes are in fact, a death trap; a love-crazy man's devotion for his beautiful wife who turns out to be shockingly replaceable, jealous daughters-in-law and silent mother-in-law – both sacrificing their dignities to satisfy the insecurities of a man, teenage first-born girls turning into glorified nannies; and remembering that while death and injuries due to domestic violence are very much on the plate, suicide is rarely an option for these women. Each female character's individuality weaves a larger shroud to include the other, and at some point, it was as though I was piecing together the life of the same woman through different characters, in changing circumstances and time.
Sisterhood of Muslim women
I understand that it takes a deep level of interest and acceptance to enter communities like the ones depicted from Karnataka to bring these familiar (at least in South Asia) yet long-suppressed stories to light. Mushtaq's straightforward approach to details, dialogue, and portrayals of necessary melodrama, which Deepa Bhasthi translated so gracefully from the Kannada, makes the stories easy to read. However, the substance of some of them might still arrest one and encourage them to pause and breathe normally for a while.
Since I picked up Heart Lamp, I have been noticing the sisterhood of Muslim women, with the ends of their saris and dupattas over their heads, and the ones in black burqas, passing me on streets, airports, markets or long walks. Some of them make eye contact, some look away, and a few have smiled. They all make me spiral through a thousand and one questions.
How had I gotten so attached to the idea of being 'modern,' when I blurred this large section of women out of focus? Didn't I raise my voice for equality and compassion for various other conveniently suitable causes, then why never for them? When did I stop being empathetic towards these women? At what point did I become so desensitised? When did my modernity encourage looking away from the supposed lesser-than? Most importantly, have I not edited them out from my perfect image of the greater humanity?
And now that I have seen the invisible, will I walk beyond the stories of Heart Lamp using the flame that Mushtaq has lit for people like me, to understand further, include, and unify?
Iffat Nawaz is a novelist. Her debut work of fiction, Shurjo's Clan, was published by Penguin Random House India in 2022.