Banu Mushtaq - Heart Lamp (And Other Stories, 2025) ***½

Banu Mushtaq is an activist, lawyer and writer from the southern Indian state of Karnataka. She writes in the Kannada language. She describes in this collection of twelve stories, the daily struggles of muslim women in their families and community, especially in the context of male dominance and religious hypocrisy. Her characters are taken from life itself, imperfect, with lots of selfishness, powerlessness, ignorance, short-sightedness and kindness at the same time. Many characters - especially the men - sacrifice their feelings and duties for greed and societal respect. Women are usually the victims of the whims of the men: cheap labour, no decision-making power, excluded and subordinate. Banu Mushtaq's story may seem exaggerated at times, but they crystallise in their tight plots a lot of human suffering and a rare insight behind the walls of the houses of the Indian muslim community. She is quite daring at times, which unsurprisingly has led to demands for censorship. Material possession drives all other values. 

"Material things had become priceless, and human beings worthless. Behind those material possessions, people's feelings were on sale. Things decided the relationships between small people with big shadows. A fridge had the capacity to change the life of a young bride. The different colours it came in could play Holi on her young dreams. Such possessions held a prominent spot not only in the house, but also in making life decisions. People were running, having tossed their worthiness and their relationships into the air. Tired, collapsing in exhaustion, sweating, they were running. Aha! The golden deer is more than roaming about, it is making everyone mad too. It has brought everyone under its spell. The tale of its magnetism - no one could grasp it in their hands - this was the grand mark of civilisation!" (p. 123)

The last story is a letter to God, called "Be A Woman Once, Oh Lord". By addressing God directly and reproaching him for what is happening in the world, she breaks through every convention and level of acceptability for her community. 

"Whether you have time for these small problems striking my limited thoughts, whether you feel my entire life is a three-hour play, whether I seem like an actor to you, keep one thing in mind: my happiness and sadness are not borrowed. They are not to be performed. They are to be experienced. You are just a detached director. When one of your own characters assaults my mind, have you no duties as a director? Grant me one solace at least. What is my fault in all this, tell me?" (p. 203)

 Her stories are at the same time revealing, interesting and audacious. Her language is full of local words that defy translation (food, religious names, clothes, ...) which gives the stories an additional strong quality and authenticity. The story-telling itself is at times meandering and less tight than we could expect from modern day writing. Whether this collection of stories deserves to win the International Booker Prize is of course another matter.