‘Heart Lamp’ book review: A sprinkle of humour in a serious read on the Booker-shortlist

More than anything else, Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq's International Booker-shortlisted Heart Lamp: Selected Stories is an important book. While Muslims continue to be exoticised in pop culture, and anything else hardly reaches the mainstream, stories of Muslim women, that too from south India, are even rarer. Them raging, dissenting, and pushing back against patriarchial religious and social power structures are stories that are seldom heard, especially when told from a place of poignancy and not a saviour mentality. And that is exactly what Mushtaq does in this collection of 12 short stories written between 1990 and 2023 and translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi.

All of Mushtaq's women are about their relationships. They're mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters. Along with familial responsibilities, they also bear the burden of the unequal power structure and also honour.

"Those who want to die don't walk around talking about it. But if you had any concern for this family's honour then you would have done that instead of coming here. The house that your dholi goes to should be the house from which your dhola comes out. That is the life of a decent woman," Mehrun is told, in one of the stories titled Heart Lamp, at her parental home when she seeks help against her husband who has found another woman.

While women are the victims of the injustices inflicted by patriarchy, the men in Mushtaq's stories are mostly indifferent, angry, lustful, and weak. Not all are bad, but they're unable to understand the women's distress, especially their autonomy over their bodies. And this isn't only restricted to them made to pop out baby after baby, as the menfolk are too tall to get an "operation".

In a story titled 'High-Heeled Shoe,' a young man Nayaz, who is obsessed with his sister-in-law's high-heeled shoes gets a similar pair for his wife Asifa. He makes her wear them, indifferent to the fact that they're too small for his five-month-pregnant wife to even walk a step and that she hasn't worn anything other than his Hawaii slippers.

All of Mushtaq's women are confined to the four walls of their homes, apart from one who's a lawyer but bears the guilt of not giving enough time to her children. "Only God can save us working mothers," she writes, highlighting that whatever one's faith might be, women's stories everywhere are the same. This delicate balance between the individual culture and universality in experiences makes each of Mushtaq's stories a deeply engrossing read.

Humour sprinkled here and there, amid what can be termed a serious read, also does the trick. For example: "When learning the Qur'an is the big story here, don't bring in the Ramayana and Mahabharata to distract me. Then someone else will enter the conversation, and it will become a different thing altogether," says Imaad, in 'The Arabic Teacher and Gobi Manchuri', when reprimanded by her sister, who calls him "a Shakuni-like uncle" during an argument over her kids' Quran teacher.

Here, the translator has done an excellent job of keeping the humour in the story and the musicality in the tone alive. For example: "You meet such crack people." Here, the term "crack," takes the cake.

While Mushtaq's focus remains on the injustices meted out to women, they aren't silent but dissent, rage, and rebel in ways big and small, which is the most effective in 'Black Cobras'. Here, when Aashraf, who's left by her husband for giving him three daughters and is not left with enough to even get medicines for her sick infant, she turns to the mutawalli, the custodian of the local mosques. She begs and pleads to get her husband to at least provide for the medicines, but to no avail. With her pleas and petitions falling on the mutawalli's deaf ears, she resorts to sitting at the mosque with her sick child on her lap and the other two alongside as the other women watch her peeping through the confines of their homes and feeling her pain. But when the tragedy falls, and Aashraf loses her toddler, the women unite in a collective rage and hold the mutawalli accountable for playing a part in the tragedy, reducing a man of high stature to nothing. As he walks on the street, a woman throws a stone toward him, pretending there is a dog, and shouts, “A dog, just a dog!” Another one yells: “Nothing good will come your way … may black cobras coil themselves around you," from a distance.

The imagery Mushtaq and Bhasthi's words evoke here is striking. In fact, apart from everything else, what strikes the most is the vivid imagery Mushtaq creates throughout the book, which takes you deep into the women's personal spaces. It reads as if one is inside the home, as a silent spectator, as events unfold.

Bhasthi calls Mushtaq a "bandaya”, meaning a rebel. And it's no small act to challenge religious and social power structures and bring such stories to light. However, it's a pity that despite the author having been writing for decades, Heart Lamp: Selected Stories is the first time her work has been translated into English. But better late than never. All eyes are now on the International Booker announcement.

Heart Lamp: Selected Stories

Author: Banu Mushtaq (translated by Deepa Bhasthi)

Publisher: Penguin India

Pages : 224

Price: ₹399

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