Latest news with #HeartLamp:SelectedStories
Hindustan Times
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Making of the sisterhood of a writer, her translator
The collection Heart Lamp: Selected Stories has riches, and some repetitive moments. That said, it is undeniably one of the very few examples of its kind, available in English. Like the Tamil writer Salma, Banu Mushtaq takes us to a different geography and gives us a linguistically heterogeneous, domestic world of Muslim men and women — markedly different from the North Indian fare of an Attia Hosain or Khadija Mastoor. However, my thoughts today are not so much about the original but the translation, and it involves not a comparison with the original (for I can't read Kannada) but how it comes over to us. In other words, how do I read this text as a non-Kannadiga woman reader/translator and respond from that twin-ness. This is also to foreground the translator's role who, unlike many translators has been rewarded, but like most translators, not engaged with. Like translators, readers also translate, fill gaps, and sometimes don't. (AP) When you open the book, you move directly into the first story. There is no introduction to the writer, or the translator's note — the opening paragraph in Deepa Bhasthi's translation makes a luminous start — the long sentence is done sharply, going from the 'concrete jungle' through 'people, people, people' and ending with the introduction of Mujahid. The voice is that of Zeenat ('Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal') who then tells us how absurdly few choices there are for educated and intelligent women to introduce husbands. Mushtaq's comment on the limited language of kinship and intimacy and its repeated failure to sustain equality is picked up by Bhasthi who brings us to a witty voice, playful options such as ganda or pati and ending with how for women, Muslim women in particular, husband-as-God is sanctified in language. So, what can a Zeenat-like person do in such circumstances? Zeenat who notices the 'labour' of both Shaista and Asifa. Mushtaq, Zeenat, Bhasthi – all of them show a keen ear for what is not said, and push the conventions of language. The first striking impression is that the writer had found her translator and we have entered a world of women whose myriad spoken and unspoken words have found a place. Women translators have often found thick histories behind women's few words, told in seriousness or in play. Every once in a while, (not always), you can't help feeling that when you read a translation that only a woman could have written this; translated this — both acts intertwine, interchange, and become inseparable. Does writing carry the gender of its creator? Perhaps. It is more evident on some days. Bhasthi's use of the words, 'arey, I forgot' or 'Che! I have made a mistake' also helps define Zeenat conversationally. There's comfort with which Bhasthi makes rules and breaks them as she pleases. Her use of Indian repetitions such as 'hot-hot' samosa sparkles, and does not feel oriental or gimmick-like. Bhasthi has a light touch, she does things but also lets them be allowing for intrigue as well as familiarity. For instance, the song about pigs in 'Fire Rain'. 'Handi yendeke heegaleyuve...' which she does not translate, instead builds its meaning into the interpretative sentences of the next paragraph. 'The meat of a pig is haram. Likewise anger. Devout Muslims believe that they become impure if they even see a pig', and so on. As a non-Kannadiga reader who didn't understand the song, I saw the word handi several times and knew that to be the pig. The corrosive effects of this prohibitive food on the body, at home? I wondered. It was much too important to let it go, so I confirmed it with a Kannadiga friend. However, take another instance in the same story, 'Shavige payasa'. I do not know what 'shavige' means. The word payasa is close to payasam which I do know. So I fill in the gap and tell myself it is some kind of kheer, an analogical element that helps me get through. The sentence also has some context: '…that sister had come and asked for a share in the family property, and made the biryani and shavige payasa prepared in her honour taste bitter'. On the other hand, the word 'Rii' used in this collection by the women to address their husbands made me wonder if it was an elevating word of respect or an endearment. The relationships between husbands and wives in Heart Lamp make little room for endearments so I stayed with that ambivalence, without an anxiety to find out. The word seragu refers to the head-covering by women, but is it like a dupatta? Perhaps it is. Bhasthi would not appreciate this north Indianisation I am doing! It would have helped a little to know 'Rii' more than seragu. Is it untranslatable because it's too intimate or not intimate at all? My discomfiture with somewhat monochromatic conjugality in the book comes to my aid in making some assumptions here. Like translators, readers also translate, fill gaps, and sometimes don't, knowing that it may not be possible or even necessary. The odd Urdu word, the question tag, the Kannada word that is sometimes translated and sometimes not — is there a coherent philosophy here? It is, by Bhasthi's admissions, a 'sisterhood' and if I may add, one that also involved the writer and translator playing with multiple languages throwing words back and forth — Dakhini, Urdu, Telugu, Kannada and so on. The combination of shared understanding on one hand, and a rich repository of multilingual practices of speech by both women have created, I believe, a highly nimble, unapologetically 'itself' and sparkling translation. What goes as the translator's note appears at the end, titled 'against italics'. Bhasthi's translation philosophy is not only against italics, it is against taming. But so is Mushtaq's book and all the women in and around. Rita Kothari is professor of English, Ashoka University, and co-director, Ashoka Center for Translation. The views expressed are personal.
Deccan Herald
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Deccan Herald
Kannada Sahitya Parishat's ex-president writes to CM, urges to waive GST on International Booker Prize money
Banu Mushtaq's 'Heart Lamp: Selected Stories', translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi, won the International Booker Prize on Wednesday.
Gulf Weekly
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Weekly
Winning hearts
Heart Lamp: Selected Stories by Indian activist, lawyer and writer Banu Mushtaq has bagged this year's International Booker Prize. Translated by Deepa Bhasthi, the 12 stories written between 1990 and 2023 tackle the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India, shedding light on a variety of themes, including class divide, cultural disconnection and generational trauma, in a manner that is witty and humourous, yet moving and excoriating. 'My stories are about women, how society demands unquestioning obedience from them, and in doing so, inflicts inhumane cruelty upon them, turning them into mere subordinates,' Banu said. Released last month, Heart Lamp is the first short story collection and the first Kannada language translation to win the prize. Deepa explained that her approach to translating the book was not to turn the language into proper English, but rather to introduce the reader to new words. 'I call it translating with an accent,' she said.
The Wire
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Wire
Humour, Scepticism and the Realities of the Familial in Banu Mushtaq's ‘Heart Lamp'
Representative image. Photo: Joshua Tsu/Unsplash Real journalism holds power accountable Since 2015, The Wire has done just that. But we can continue only with your support. Donate now The diversity of the seething everyday life of certain classes of southern Indian Muslims is showcased in swift, confident strokes in Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq's Heart Lamp: Selected Stories (translated by Deepa Bhasthi). The edition unfortunately does not fully clarify when each story was written, but the blurb indicates these were written between 1990 and 2023, even as Mushtaq is linked to literary movements from the 1970s onward. The helpful translator's note informs us that Mushtaq's Kannada/Dakhni is brewed from a lively mix of Persian, Dehlavi, Marathi and Telugu. Even though English must partially flatten, much of the humorous, wide-eyed energy of the stories does come through. Bhasthi argues that it is not enough to Anglicise Indian words – rather, that Anglicisation must carry the flavour and sound of the region that is being translated. Thus, rotti instead of roti, and lungi and panche instead of dhoti, and the Kannada-inflected khabaristan instead of the more 'accurate' Arabic-laden qabaristan. Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi Heart Lamp: Selected Stories Penguin, 2025 Translations must thus negotiate familiarity and distance. One must not assume that a reader can eavesdrop at any home; and yet, the pleasure of eavesdropping is also to see all the clashes of similarity and difference. Many of the stories deal with the family, for example, and Mushtaq, who is also a lawyer active in social causes, both reaffirms and undermines the centrality of the family by introducing barbed questions of property, marital distress, the education of professional women, livelihood and parenting, and so on. What makes this literary and engaging is that Mushtaq carves enough distance from these perennially stressful issues. There is much descriptive humour, a love of describing faces and attitudes reminiscent of leisured nineteenth century novels: 'That their thoughts went in the same direction was proof of their friendship. He was an expert in deducing the mutawalli saheb's moods from the ups and downs of his face, the latitude and longitude of the movements of his eyebrows, the quivering of his moustache, the lines of his nose and the lines at the side of his mouth. He would tailor his words, his behavior, the bend at his waist accordingly.' The shrewdness of Mushtaq's writing is that it is sometimes unclear if the tone is only that of humour, and not also that of scepticism and menace. For example, here is a description of a body being transported to be buried in a cemetery after it was inadvertently misplaced: 'Finally Nisar's body was exhumed. The mutawalli and his follower's draped the rotten body in the brand new, starched shroud they had brought with them. Since the body was too rotten for ritual bathing, holy water was sprinkled on it. The foul smell made them want to retch, but no one showed it on their faces. The policemen covered their noses with their handkerchiefs…They had poured on copious amounts of scent and covered the top of the bier with a chador made of strings of jasmine to mask the smell of rotting flesh. None of the jasmine buds had bloomed.' The black humour continues, corpses continue to be mislaid: 'Was it a Hindu corpse? Was it a Muslim corpse? The body was too rotten to be identified. Should it rot her, should it rot there.' Banu Mushtaq. Photo: Facebook/Banu Mushtaq Astringent humour continues to serve as social commentary. Here is an example from another story titled 'A Decision of the Heart': 'The first option was to give talaq to Akhila. But given that he really loved her, and that they had four small children, he decided that was no answer. Apart from her intense irritation with Mehabood Bi, Akhila was a good woman. Also, if he gave her talaq, there was no way he could stay in town. Wouldn't her brothers break his arms and legs?' Such passages put one in mind of the works of Anees Salim. There are stories however that work on a more consistently grave register. This includes the last one, 'Be a woman once, Oh Lord' (the deity is also addressed as Prabhu), where the tone retains a more job-like questioning, a whole life poured out in angry bewilderment at endless obfuscations of tradition and avuncular patriarchy: 'I has asked three or four simple questions, to which I received thousands of answers in reply.' Shot through the despair are still some desperately hopeful imaginations of what marriage somewhere may still be: 'If only I had been his backbone and he the hands that would wipe my tears away…' As noted, it would have been helpful if the chronology and rationale of the ordering of stories were explicated. One would then have had a better sense of Mushtaq's evolving sensibility, her responses to her own maturing imagination. Yet, even as it stands, much is gained: an introduction to many readers to a voice that can be playful, despondent, forgiving, and often just minutely and detachedly observant. The work is a testament to the riches of writing that one continually finds in India – whether the axes that one chooses to explore be that of region or gender or language or profession or religion. Nikhil Govind is the author, most recently, of The Moral Imagination of the Mahabharata (Bloomsbury, 2023).
Scroll.in
04-05-2025
- General
- Scroll.in
‘Women need their own rooms in their own worlds': Deepa Bhasthi on translating the female language
An editor, a bookseller and a writer walked into a Mediterranean restaurant – one that also served biriyani, most curiously – the other day. Over plates of lamb-something, semi-delicious hummus, some pita and fried halloumi, the serving washed down with olive lemonade, they talked about books, writing, female experiences plus gaze and such other essentials. By the end of the long evening in sultry, humid Bangalore, I wondered what an eavesdropper – not that there were any, I must add – might have made of a table of women dipping in and out of this and that topic. Us women fascinate me in a way that a roomful of men, even if, or perhaps especially if they are discussing the state of affairs of home, country or world could never. It isn't that women don't care for or talk about grander affairs around us. (Although, really, what could be more historically fraught, regularly violent, unhinged, even, and deeply political than one's family?) But the idea that we do it in a language that is gendered is one of my great current interests. It is also what fuels a deepening interest in translating the feminine, whether it shows up as stories foregrounding the female experience in my own writing practice or in translating works by women writers. Linguists have long toyed with the idea that a woman's language is a different language, that there are subtle and not-so-subtle differences in tone, grammar, intonations, in phrasing, even in pronunciation and several other parts that make up a language. But research to objectively prove the gendered nature of language is often riddled with the inability to arrive at the same results consistently across time and place, and is supported mostly only by anecdotal material. Yet, any woman speaking any language anywhere in the world will be privy to, and admit to using gestures, movements, instincts, words and other linguistic tools that are designed to keep her communication outside of male attention and understanding. Keep the scientists aside; I don't think anyone thinks as deeply about how language/s and sociolinguistics work in defining worlds as much as translators do. It is an odd feeling, to think simultaneously in two (or more) languages, playing with the grammar, syntax and unique idiosyncrasies of two distinct language cultures: Kannada, my mother tongue, and English, in my case. It is not until very recently that I began to consciously think about what it means to train language to work for and use it from a female gaze. Perhaps it is that such exercises make up so much of our interiority that we don't see it as another thing to insert into the multiple listicles going on in our overworked minds. The female language manifests like a quiet tremor throughout two of the three books I've published in translation: Kodagina Gouramma's Fate's Game and Other Stories and Banu Mushtaq's Heart Lamp: Selected Stories, which is currently shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025. Both are set in the interior worlds of women, although the stories couldn't be more different from one another in terms of the social and religious identities of the writers, the community the women they wrote live in, even the time periods. Where Gouramma worked in the 1930s and died at just 27 when she was starting to build a writing career, Mushtaq's stories are deeply informed by her decades of work in social movements and her career as a lawyer. The stories in Heart Lamp are selections from work published between 1990 and 2023. Yet, one realises that all the women in each of these stories could, with minor changes, obviously, shift into the other's world and still, to the reader, make absolute sense. This is, in fact, a damning treatise on how little the women's position in a patriarchal society has changed, that even though they are over half a century apart, attempts to control and tame the female continue, just as women's resistance and dissent and rage against these methods carry on as well. In 'Vani's Puzzle', perhaps the best known of Gouramma's short stories, there is a strong female friendship between Indu, a young widow and Vani, a neighbour she befriends and the wife of the busy doctor she develops a crush on. The two women are often doing things together, keeping house, cooking, ironing the man's shirts – one sees everything as annoying chores, the other, Indu, is house-proud, happy to potter about. Gestures, but mostly instinct, guide the way they adjust their friendship around the routine of the man. When two women, as close as they can be, speak, a lot is said, although not necessarily in words. Likewise, in Mushtaq's stories, what remains unsaid is often more than the thoughts, dialogues and instinctual reactions that make it to words on the page. Food – the making of, usually – features prominently in many of the stories in Heart Lamp, it is when women do their thinking, analysing, berating (usually men). Biriyani, parottas 'as light as flowers,' watermelon, fried fish from the Kaka's Hotel, a glass of milk from an old kitchen with a dirty, worn-out floor, chicken soup and the grand generosity of a packet of cheap biscuits bestowed on a poor person – these set the stories within the architecture of female-hood. There is, however, little actual architecture in either Gouramma's or Mushtaq's stories, nothing much to orient the reader spatially, save for in a story here or a setting there. Perhaps this too is intentional, subconscious. For a woman rarely has ownership over her surroundings. In patriarchy, she first lives in her father's house, then her husband's, and if a lifetime of self-sacrifice brings her luck, ends her life at her son's. What she owns is emotional weight, access to a life-giving sisterhood and her own interior landscape, none worth all that much, if patriarchy had its way. As a translator, relaying these layers of the unspoken and the felt is immensely gratifying. It feels like love to convey just how complex, how nuanced, how exquisite a woman's world is. Yet, it feels also like a betrayal, as if videotaping a secret handshake for the whole world to see. Will men, even some women, understand better now? Do we want them to? What I do know is that us women, with our sense of humour, our resilience, our everyday dissent and the undeniable truth that we mostly get each other, these change living, breathing things like language all the time. When one has another language, one has another way to be in the world. Goodness knows that women need their own rooms in their own worlds. And perhaps that is the moral of the story.
