Heart Lamp (Banu Mushtaq)

The moment i got to know that a Kannada book translated to English had been longlisted and subsequently shortlisted for the Booker Prize this year, I had to get my hands on it. A book orginally written in Kannada, about the experiences of women from a part of the country I live in? In fact, it’s a tad embarrassing that i got to know of this book only after it got long listed for the Booker. 

This collection of short stories written originally in Kannada by Banu Mushtaq and ably translated by Deepa Bashti, talk of the lives of Muslim women in small towns of Karnataka. Their lives are mundane, their fates determined by family and society. Their struggles are ordinary and common place - children who need to be fed, a husband who has strayed, a mother in law who is unhappy. Sometimes one of them may be overcome with an intense desire to take a decision for herself. In another, fate may play a role and sort things out. Often, there would be nothing to take away the pain. But it in these simple mundane lives with ordinary struggles, Mushtaq finds her stories and her heroines and occasionally her heroes.

Mushtaq’s writing and Bhashti’s translation and the themes explored reminded me of the other great woman author who explores similar themes - Ismat Chughtai. While Chugtai wrote in the 1940s and Mushtaq's writing is more recent, the themes are similar and unfortunately the conditions and barriers the women battle are very similar. In 75 years, we seem to be where we were, when it comes to the battles these women face.

In this collection, I met Shaista in Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal, who said something that made me tear up. She said “My grandmother used to say that when a wife dies, it’s like an elbow injury for her husband. The pain is extreme for one instant - it is intolerable. But it lasts only a few seconds, and after that one does not feel anything.” In Black Cobras, I met Aashraf and her baby girl Munni and saw what desperation can look like.  In A Decision of the Heart, I saw Yusuf trying to get his mother remarried, in Heart Lamp, I shared Mehrun’s grief of being unloved and in The Shroud, I experienced Shaziya’s regret and desperation coming from not fulfilling a promise and In Be a Woman Once Oh Lord….. I said the same thing - Be a woman once almighty and then tell us if all this is fair…  

These stories may be taking place in a particular place with women of a particular community …. But these are universal stories of women across the world. Change the names and bit of the context, and this could happen anywhere.

Do read the Translator’s Note at the end titled Against Italics - this one note makes the stories even more beautiful and real. Thank me later.