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The Wire
23-05-2025
- Politics
- The Wire
The Politics of ‘Heart Lamp' Is Profound, Urgent and Reflects the Lived Reality of Millions
Menu हिंदी తెలుగు اردو Home Politics Economy World Security Law Science Society Culture Editor's Pick Opinion Support independent journalism. Donate Now Top Stories The Politics of 'Heart Lamp' Is Profound, Urgent and Reflects the Lived Reality of Millions Pavan Korada 12 minutes ago The political in Banu Mushtaq's stories is not confined to the grand theatre of statecraft or the clamour of mass movements. It resides, perhaps most perniciously, in quotidian interactions. Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty Real journalism holds power accountable Since 2015, The Wire has done just that. But we can continue only with your support. Contribute now The arrival of Banu Mushtaq's Heart Lamp into the Anglophone literary sphere, garlanded no less by the International Booker Prize, presents an occasion not merely for polite applause, but for a somewhat more astringent contemplation of the realities it so unflinchingly depicts. It is a truth, perhaps inconvenient to the neatly categorising academic mind but readily apparent to any keen observer of human affairs, that fiction, in its most potent form, often serves as a more reliable conduit to societal truths than the self-serving pronouncements of those in power or the anaesthetised narratives of officialdom. Mushtaq, through Deepa Bhasthi's evidently skilled and, one notes with a certain grim satisfaction, un-italicising translation, lays bare the insidious, often brutal, mechanics of power as they operate within the ostensibly private domain of the family and the community, specifically, within certain Muslim milieus of Karnataka. The political, let us be clear, is not confined to the grand theatre of statecraft or the clamour of mass movements; it resides, perhaps most perniciously, in the quotidian interactions, the unspoken codes, the normalised injustices that structure individual lives and circumscribe human agency. Mushtaq's stories are a veritable compendium of this intimate politics, where the personal is not merely political, but is the very crucible in which political consciousness – or its tragic suppression – is forged. Consider Zeenat in 'Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal.' Her opening disquisition on the nomenclature of a husband – rejecting 'yajamana' (owner) for its implication of servitude, finding 'ganda' too burdensome, and 'pati' too bookish and prone to deification – is not mere semantic quibbling. It is a profound, albeit internally articulated, rebellion against the patriarchal lexicon that seeks to define and diminish her. Her clear-sighted observation of the religious sanction accorded to wifely subservience ('other than Allah above, our pati is God on earth…the wife is the husband's most obedient servant, his bonded labourer') is a stark indictment. Also read: Banu Mushtaq's 'Heart Lamp' Spotlights Lives of Muslim Women: International Booker Prize Judges Yet, this critical consciousness, sharp as it is, exists alongside a life navigated within the very structures it interrogates. The tragedy of Shaista, the eponymous recipient of stone slabs rather than a living, breathing acknowledgement of her being, underscores the brutal disposability of women once their primary utility – child-bearing, companionship on the male's terms – is deemed exhausted or inconvenient. Iftikhar's performative affection, his grandiloquent promise of a 'Shaista Mahal' (a tomb, as Mujahid ironically points out, for a dead wife), is a masterful depiction of patriarchal sentimentality masking a profound instrumentalism. The new, young replacement, veiled and silent, serves as a chilling testament to the cyclical nature of this erasure. One is reminded of the ease with which established structures absorb and neutralise individual lives, particularly those of women whose value is contingent upon their relationship to men. This theme of male entitlement, cloaked in religious or social sanction, explodes with a ferocious clang in 'Fire Rain.' The Mutawalli Usman Saheb, a figure of supposed piety and communal authority, embodies the hypocrisy that often undergirds such power. His fury at his sister Jameela's audacity in demanding her rightful share of ancestral property – a share, mind you, sanctioned by the Shariat he ostensibly upholds – is revealing. His internal calculus, weighing the material loss against the affront to his authority, is a study in the conflation of personal interest with divine or communal will. Property, that great arbiter of social relations, becomes the site of a moral and political struggle. The narrative skilfully juxtaposes his performative religiosity (his journey to the masjid, his ablutions) with his seething resentment and his manipulative deflection of Jameela's claim by manufacturing a communal crisis around Nisar's improper burial. This latter episode is particularly telling – a man of dubious character in life, Nisar, in death, becomes a convenient symbol, a tool for the Mutawalli to reassert his leadership, galvanise the community, and, crucially, deflect from the legitimate claims made upon him. Also read: Why Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi's International Booker Is a Seminal Moment The ease with which Jameela's husband is co-opted, sacrificing his wife's legitimate claim for the 'greater good' of a manufactured religious cause, speaks volumes about the solidarity of male interests. And Arifa, Usman's wife, her quiet recognition of Jameela's just demand, her whispered pleas for fairness, her memory of the saying, ' Hakhdaar tarse toh angaar ka nuuh barse (If the one who has rights is displeased, a rain of fire will fall),' represents that suppressed consciousness, that moral counterpoint that is invariably overridden by the bluster of patriarchal power and its cynical deployment of communal sentiment. The final 'rain of fire' is not literal, but metaphorical — the searing consequence of injustice manifesting in his own son's illness. The Mutawalli figure reappears, if anything, in an even more damning light in 'Black Cobras.' Abdul Khader Saheb, another custodian of communal morality, is approached by Aashraf, a woman abandoned by her husband Yakub after bearing him three daughters. The Mutawalli's response to Aashraf's plight, his casual dismissal, his invocation of 'Allah's will' to justify Yakub's cruelty and his own inaction, is a chilling exposé of how religious authority can become a bulwark for patriarchal oppression. Yakub's brutal logic – 'Lei! If you who squats to pee has this much arrogance, how much arrogance should I, who stands to piss, have?' – is the raw, unvarnished expression of male supremacy, a sentiment the Mutawalli, for all his pious trappings, implicitly endorses through his inaction and later, his flight from responsibility. The death of Munni, Aashraf's sickly child, at the steps of the mosque, a place of supposed sanctuary, is devastating. It is a political death, a death caused by systemic neglect, by the refusal of those in power (both domestic and communal) to acknowledge her humanity and her mother's rights. The subsequent, subtle rebellion of the women of the mohalla – their symbolic acts of contempt towards the Mutawalli – is a poignant, if ultimately contained, expression of dissent. It suggests a simmering resentment, an understanding of the injustice, even if it lacks the power to overtly challenge the established order. Amina, the Mutawalli's wife, deciding to get an operation, is her own quiet, definitive act of reclaiming her body and future. 'Heart Lamp' itself, the story giving the collection its title, plumbs the depths of female despair when familial and communal structures of support prove illusory. Mehrun, facing her husband Inayat's infidelity and abandonment, turns to her natal family, only to be met with platitudes, victim-blaming, and an overriding concern for 'family honour' — an honour, as always, that seems to reside disproportionately in the comportment and endurance of its women. Her brothers, the ' sher-e-babbar ' (lions) she once boasted of, prove to be paper tigers when confronted with the inconvenient reality of a woman seeking genuine redress rather than a patch-up. Their solution is to return her to the abusive situation, to preserve the facade of a functioning marriage, irrespective of the human cost. Mehrun's final, tragic act, thwarted by her daughter Salma, is a testament to the extreme psychological pressures faced by women in such situations. The 'heart lamp,' one presumes, is the faint flicker of hope, of maternal love, of a desire for a life of dignity, so easily extinguished by the cold winds of patriarchal expectation and familial betrayal. One must also note the translator's brief but significant note, 'Against Italics.' This seemingly minor technical point about translation practice is, in fact, deeply political. The refusal to exoticise, to mark certain words as 'foreign' and therefore 'other,' is an act of asserting the equality of linguistic and cultural experience. It is a quiet insistence that the realities depicted, the languages spoken, are not curiosities for an Anglophone audience but are valid, self-contained worlds of meaning. What emerges from Mushtaq's collection is a searing political anatomy of a community, or perhaps, communities, where the lives of women are circumscribed by a deeply entrenched patriarchy that draws its sustenance from religious misinterpretation, economic dependency, and the ever-present threat of social sanction or outright violence. The men – Iftikhar, Usman Saheb, Abdul Khader Saheb, Yakub, Inayat, even Zeenat's Mujahid with his casual pronouncements about the replaceability of wives – are not necessarily monolithic villains, but rather products and perpetrators of a system that grants them immense power and little accountability. Their cruelties are often banal, their justifications self-serving, their piety a convenient cloak. The women, for their part, exhibit a spectrum of responses – Zeenat's sharp internal critique, Arifa's pained silence, Aashraf's desperate, tragic struggle, Mehrun's ultimate despair, Shaista's vivacity ultimately extinguished. Their agency is severely constrained, yet their consciousness, their awareness of the injustices they face, is often painfully acute. Mushtaq does not offer easy solutions or celebratory narratives of resistance. Instead, she presents the nuanced, often heartbreaking, reality of women's lives lived under the shadow of an overbearing patriarchal order. The award of a major literary prize to such a work is, of course, to be noted. It may bring these uncomfortable truths to a wider, perhaps more complacent, audience. But the real value of Heart Lamp lies not in the accolades it garners, but in its unflinching honesty, its courageous exploration of the hidden injuries of class, gender, and communal power. It is literature that demands not just to be read, but to be reckoned with, for the politics it lays bare is not confined to the pages of a book; it is, in myriad forms, the lived reality of millions. And that, one must submit, is a political statement of the most profound and urgent kind. 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The Hindu
21-05-2025
- General
- The Hindu
Banu Mushtaq: A voice of empathy and resilience
Banu Mushtaq, eminent short story writer and Booker awardee for 2025, is a writer-activist deeply concerned with gender inequalities and the patriarchal violence which is invisibalised by religion and tradition. In retrospect, her major concerns and her passionate rebellious stance seem to have emerged from the Bandaya (protest) movement in Kannada literature in the 1970s and the 1980s. This was also the time which saw the coming into maturity of the second generation of women writers who discovered their authentic voices in the midst of the churming created by the people's movements in Karnataka. The phenomenal Lankesh Patrike, a weekly tabloid edited by P. Lankesh, also proved to be a platform for writers who emerged as the major representatives of women-centric fiction and non-fiction writings. Banu also doubled as a reporter for the tabloid from Hassan where she worked as a lawyer. Keen eye for the ordinary Expectedly, she was drawn into controversies over her no-holds-barred reports. These experiences which shaped her added depth and objectivity to her sensitive understanding of the lives of Muslim women. Her short stories are written with a sense of engagement and empathy with the uncomplaining, silenced victims of moribund customs. What makes her stories distinctive is her patient attention to the details of the ordinary lives of women. At times, the narrative voice in her stories resorts to rhetoric and raw anger, but her better stories haunt the readers with the depiction of wasted and unlived lives. But the stories are also about resilience and the small acts of defiance and resistance. Most certainly, the stories do not aim at appealing to the sympathy of the readers. Blending irony with emotion In one of her stories, the last prayer is for God to be born as a woman: this led to a public controversy, with some orthodox individuals demanding her excommunication. Incidentally, the prayer is often repeated in women's writing in Kannada. It is a devastating story showing how male domination, lust, and greed subject women into servitude. Tragically, this is so normalised that no one takes notice. The protagonist can only pray to God once, to 'be a woman once, Oh lord' in case he is planning to create another world. Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal is an example of how Banu can blend irony with powerful feelings. Shaista, whose husband had waxed poetic, promising to build Shaista Mahal as a monument of his love for her, marries a young girl on the fortieth day after her death. Yes, Mahals are built as beautiful graves for dead wives. In Black Cobras, the story on which Girish Kasaravalli made an extraordinary film, the wife is turned away with her three girl children because the husband, an auto rickshaw driver, wants a male child to take up his profession later. The mutavalli, a corrupt and insensitive man supports the husband. He is one of those misinterpreting religion against women. Unlike the helpless, protagonist the mutavalli's wife decides not to be a childbearing machine for her hypocritical husband any longer. Deconstructing stereotypes Banu, as a short story writer, is an accomplished narrator and manages to employ the traditional elements of storytelling to communicate a devastating portrayal of how patriarchy operates, taking advantage of the multiple pressures on women to conform. Women's writing has treated the domestic sphere as a site for examining subjugated women who do not possess the agency to question, nor the material conditions to live independently. Banu probes into this bleak world, at times almost suggesting that there is no exit. Her stories powerfully deconstruct the stereotypes about safe, protected domesticity and of marriage as companionship. What emerges is the troubling insight that only foundational changes in society can undo gender inequality.
India Today
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- India Today
Banu Mushtaq's ‘Heart Lamp' burns bright
(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated May 19, 2025)In 'Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal', the opening story from Banu Mushtaq's short story collection Heart Lamp (translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi), there's a passage where the female narrator is struggling with how to introduce her husband to readers. 'Mujahid is my home person. Oh. That sounds odd. A wife is usually the one who stays at home, so that makes her the home person. Perhaps then Mujahid is my office person. Che! I have made a mistake again. The office is not mine, after all. How else can I say this? If I use the term yajamana and call him owner, then I will have to be a servant, as if I am an animal or a dog.'advertisementHeart Lamp, for which Mushtaq and Bhasthi have been shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize, has several passages like this one, where a straight line is drawn between the mechanisms of language and the socio-political consequences of a patriarchal society. The 77-year-old Mushtaq, who has worked as a lawyer, an activist and a reporter previously, has been writing in Kannada for over four decades now, and the 12 stories in Heart Lamp have been chosen from this corpus. HEART LAMP: Selected Stories By Banu Mushtaq Translated from the Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi PENGUIN Rs. 399 | 224 pages advertisement'Usually, research students and teachers want a single edition of my Kannada work, so my publisher released an omnibus edition with over 50 stories,' says Mushtaq. 'In 2022, a journalist interviewed me about the issue of hijab in Karnataka educational institutions and it was during this process that I was introduced to Deepa (Bhasthi).... She read this omnibus edition and chose the ones that impressed her the most. "I didn't have any role in that selection process, but I suggested she add one-two more.' As Bhasthi explains, once the selection process was over, the next challenge was rendering Mushtaq's unique style of Kannada into English. A conscious choice made by the translator-writer duo was to forgo italics, glossaries et cetera that 'explain' Kannada words. Instead, the translation itself makes the context clear.'She uses a polyglot's version of Kannada wherein there are words and sounds from the other languages spoken in the region,' says Bhasthi. 'Hindi, Urdu, Dakhani, et cetera, and this is a very normal thing for both of us, as well as for so many South Indians. Working with writers like Banu Mushtaq makes you push yourself as a translator. It makes you challenge notions of 'classical' and 'colloquial' in a language.'It's tough to pick a favourite among the 12 stories in Heart Lamp, but personally, I found 'Black Cobra' and 'Be a Woman Once, Oh Lord!' deeply moving. The women in these stories realise that the dice is loaded against them, and whatever respite they get is usually symbolic. In 'Black Cobra', a beleaguered young mother, Aashraf, mounts a public protest against her husband's abrupt abandonment of her and her daughter Munni, with disastrous results. The 2004 National Award-winning Kannada film Hasina, directed by Girish Kasaravalli, is based on this a Woman Once, Oh Lord!' is a critique of the role played by organised religion in the 'domestic enslavement' of women. As the title suggests, the hapless female protagonist here directly addresses God, claiming that God cannot fully understand her plight until he takes on a female form.'In 2000, I was working as a lawyer and travelling to a taluka court by bus,' recalls Mushtaq. 'And I saw a woman, a beggar, who was singing a devotional Kannada film song. She had a marvellous voice and she was referring to herself as 'daasi' (servant) for her prabhu (God). I was very affected by her singing and her feelings of devotion and when I was writing this story ('Be a Woman Once, Oh Lord!'), those two words, prabhu and daasi, were on my mind.'While announcing Mushtaq and Bhasthi's place on the International Booker shortlist, the judges had praised the 'immense emotional and moral weight' wielded by the stories in Heart Lamp. Rightly so, for these stories command the reader's undivided attention. And as is the case for top-shelf literature in any language, by the time the last page is turned, it is the reader who is forced to confront the prospect of change, not least within
India Today
10-05-2025
- General
- India Today
Banu Mushtaq's 'Heart Lamp'
In 'Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal', the opening story from Banu Mushtaq's short story collection Heart Lamp (translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi), there's a passage where the female narrator is struggling with how to introduce her husband to readers. 'Mujahid is my home person. Oh. That sounds odd. A wife is usually the one who stays at home, so that makes her the home person. Perhaps then Mujahid is my office person. Che! I have made a mistake again. The office is not mine, after all. How else can I say this? If I use the term yajamana and call him owner, then I will have to be a servant, as if I am an animal or a dog.'
Hindustan Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Review: Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq
Writer, activist and lawyer Banu Mushtaq's short story collection Heart Lamp, masterfully translated by Deepa Bhasthi from Kannada into English, brings together 12 stories set in Muslim households in south India — a world familiar to Mushtaq, who has spent most of her life in Hassan in Karnataka. The opening story, Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal, leaves no doubt as to why Mushtaq's fiction has annoyed some within her own community, especially clerics. As a self-identified feminist, she speaks loud and clear against patriarchy. Her narrator, Zeenat, says, '…for us Muslims, it is said that, other than Allah above, our pati is our God on earth.' Zeenat baulks at the idea. She is not keen to give her husband Mujahid 'such elevated status'. Here, sex is not a source of pleasure but a duty that has to be performed within the context of marriage. Shaista, another character, says: 'What to do Zeenat, I did not do any planning. Before I even turned round to see what happened, I had six children.' Shaista has access to information about birth control but she isn't allowed to make decisions about her own body without her husband Iftikhar's consent. The theme of women's labour comes up in Red Lungi, which looks at 'the woes mothers face come summer vacation'. Razia is fed up of the ruckus created by the 18 children in her house. Six of these are her own; the others are sons and daughters of her brothers-in-law and her younger sister. The noise of their complaining, screaming and crying gives Razia a constant head ache. Mushtaq's empathy for her characters is evident: 'The nerves in both temples throbbed, her hot head felt like it would burst, and the veins at the back of her neck threatened to snap at any time.' The author explores how suppressed rage can turn into violence. Razia not only hits the children but also comes up with an unusual plan to deal with this summer of torture: '…in the end, she decided that she'd have to engineer bed rest for some of them somehow. Circumcisions, she decided. She would get khatna done.' Out of the 18 children, 10 are boys. Six of them are eligible for circumcision; the other four are too young. Several metres of red cloth are bought to make lungis for the boys. Noticing a large quantity of leftover cloth, Razia and her husband Latif make arrangements for a mass circumcision, inviting boys from poor families whose parents do not have the money to get the procedure done. One of these is Razia's cook Amina's son Arif. The author's description of the 13-year-old's circumcision is heart-wrenching. There are people holding his arms tightly as he screams in terror. He wants to run away from the barber coming at him with a razor. Poetic justice plays out in the most gruesome manner. When it is Razia's son Samad's turn to get circumcised, she gets hold of a surgeon instead of relying on the barber. While Arif's cut heals quickly, Samad has an infected wound. He is unable to stretch his legs and eventually has to be hospitalized. So, despite her efforts, Razia still has no respite with what seemed like a solution leading to fresh worries. In High-Heeled Shoe, a profound study of jealousy, Nayaz is obsessed with his sister-in-law Naseema's feet. The narrator says, 'Her shoes had stolen his mind…When she wore them and sauntered about, it looked like she was floating on air.' What appears as a sexual fetish at first turns out to be more sinister. Nayaz harbours a secret desire; he hopes his sister-in-law falls, sprains her ankle and breaks her toe so she can no longer wear the shoes. In that case, he would get them repaired and gift them to his wife. A Taste of Heaven examines how everyday objects are invested with immeasurable significance through personal associations that are often inexplicable to others. Bi Dadi, the 'eternal virgin' was married off as a child bride. Her husband died just a month after the wedding and she had been living with her elder brother's family ever since. The children for whom she is a grandmotherly figure make an unforgivable mistake – Azeem uses her old prayer mat to clean his bike. The children's mother offers her another prayer mat, one of better quality, but Bi Dadi is inconsolable and refuses to eat. In an unexpected twist in the tale, Sanaa, who had handed the prayer mat to her brother, pours out some Pepsi in a glass and tells Bi Dadi that it is Aab-e-Kausar (water from a river flowing in paradise). 'Only the fortunate get to drink it. You are now in heaven. We are the houris ready to serve you.' The reader is left wondering if this is an act of cruelty or compassion on her part. Mushtaq manages to sneak in some humour even when she is addressing heavy subjects. In The Arabic Teacher and Gobi Manchuri, the narrator, who is a lawyer, hires a home tutor to teach her daughters Arabic. All is well until she comes home early to find the teacher seated comfortably while her daughters and the cook are in the kitchen making 'gobi manchuri'. Turns out he has an insatiable fondness for the snack made of cauliflower florets. Though the tutor loses his job, his desire to enjoy the snack to his heart's content leads him to search for a wife who will cook it for him. But when he does marry, he is unhappy with the way his wife prepares the dish and beats her. Mushtaq surprises the reader by transforming a quirk that is initially a source of innocuous laughter into something more horrible. Bhasthi stays true to the characters and the milieu and her translation is so competent that the reader never feels like something has been lost. Words from Kannada flow into the English translation without seeming obtrusive or jarring. On the International Booker shortlist this year, Heart Lamp has earned every bit of the applause coming its way. Don't miss it. Chintan Girish Modi is a Mumbai-based journalist who writes about books, art and culture. He can be reached @chintanwriting on Instagram and X.
