Banu Mushtaq’s ‘Heart Lamp’: Why and How It’s Written is Actually as Important as What is Written
- The book is a departure from the more literary works that have won the Booker prize in the past. But what it lacks in technical sophistication, it makes up for in heart and raw emotion.
The first book of a dozen short stories to win the Booker prize, the first book in the South Indian language of Kannada to win this prize — accolades that make it easy to pick up the book and hard to have a thoughtful, nuanced and unbiased perspective on the tales.
To appreciate Banu Mushtaq’s “Heart Lamp” is to have context about the author and the translator (Deepa Bhasthi) — why and how it’s written is actually as important as what is written. Banu is an activist, lawyer and novelist. She is part of the Bandiya Sahitya — a group that uses protest literature to fight caste and creed injustices.
Banu fights patriarchy in South Indian Muslim communities. She knows them because she is one of them. She writes dramatic fiction that is at once explosive and obvious but also relatable and very Indian. And very human.
Deepa is her translator who is also true — she translates into English not what a western reader wants but what a Kannada/South Indian non-native English speaker would say. She is thoughtful in repeating the small grammatical errors in Banu’s original text. She won the Booker along with Banu and she shows us why.
Coming to the stories, my favorite is not the one in the title, rather its “High Heeled Shoes.” It’s a tale of two brothers — one who lives abroad and another who stays back in India.
Coming to the stories, my favorite is not the one in the title, rather its “High Heeled Shoes.” It’s a tale of two brothers — one who lives abroad and another who stays back in India. The brother in India is consumed with jealousy and becomes obsessed with his sister-in-law’s fancy high heeled shoes. She sashays in them wearing fine salwar suits. He wants his hard working wife to trade her chapels for them — but it’s never a trade of just the item, but a lifestyle, a way of thinking, a social order. Does his wife meekly follow her husband’s descent into an envious downward spiral?
Another story that resonated with me is around a wealthy couple who are about to embark on the Haj pilgrimage. As is customary, they host a grand feast prior to their travel from India to Saudi Arabia where they seek forgiveness for any hurt or injustice they might have inflicted on their friends and relatives. A poor but hardworking woman from their neighborhood approaches the mistress of the house and requests her to buy her a funeral shroud from Mecca and sprinkle holy water on it. She even pays for this with her hard earned money that she has saved over many years.
The rest of the story describes the couple’s travel to Hajj – do they take the time to buy the shroud? Do they respect this humble request? If they do not, what are the repercussions? This story is simple but explores the callousness in the treatment of the poor – money should not but often the lack of it undermines the respect one deserves.
I liked the more subtle and interpretive stories in this collection and appreciated them more because of the cultural context I had gained. This is a departure from the more literary works that have won the Booker prize in the past but what it lacks in technical sophistication, it makes up for in heart and raw emotion.
Priya Sethuraman lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has an exciting career in technology and immerses herself in the core and emerging technology trends. She is also passionate about the arts and appreciates all forms of literary expression including books, films, music and painting. She hopes her foray into the world of words via a critique of the works of giants can inspire her to take a pen to create an original work someday.