As soon as I read the news that an Indian author, Banu Mushtaq, had not only won but also set a record for being the first author of a short story collection to bag the Booker Prize in 2025, I knew that I wanted to read her work. I had no idea who she was or what she wrote about. In fact, I was surprised to find out that she was a Kannada author whose work’s translation, done by Deepa Bhasthi, had been bestowed with one of the greatest recognitions in English literature. To address my ignorance and read a book that was being praised all over the world, I bought a copy of Heart Lamp. I decided to go in blind with this read. I wanted to test the efficacy of the author’s work without having any prior context myself.
Heart Lamp is a collection of 12 stories that have been picked from among Banu Mushtaq’s six story collections that were published previously. This anthology of 12 tales revolves around the hardships and struggles faced by the women in the Muslim community in southern India. While some of the troubles that these women face are unique to their culture and situation, there are a few issues that have a more universal presence.
One of the things that really caught my attention in this book is the underlying rage that welled up in certain stories and created an intense atmosphere around me. Banu Mushtaq, a writer, activist and lawyer, has faced some terrible and menacing situations in her own life. It feels that she heavily draws from these experiences and pulls out the feeling of real rage against the injustice faced by women from her community.
There were 4 stories that really stood out to me in the entire collection, and they are:
- Fire Rain
- Black Cobras
- The Shroud
- A Taste of Heaven
Following is a short summary of all 12 stories and what I liked and disliked about them.
I wasn’t really impressed by this one.
The central idea of this story revolved around the societal view of how a wife should pay obeisance to her husband and not demand or expect anything in return. It also touched on the point of women being expendable and that no matter what grand gestures or promises of affection are made to the wife, the husband ends up doing the thing that society thinks is best for him.
The analogy of pain shooting up your elbow after an elbow injury felt apt in this story. Because the pain of one of the characters whose wife dies is sudden and intense, but is flicked off and forgotten very soon when the character marries another woman in a short span after the death of his wife.
Without a doubt my favourite story from the collection.
“Hakhdaar tarse toh angaar ka nooh barse”
“Har phool ke kismat mein kahan naaz-e-aroos, chand phool toh khilte hain mazaaron ke liye”
This story explored the mindset of certain men who think that drowning themselves in work, or being needed in society and leading it would help solve all their problems at home. The irony of being absent from home was completely lost to the protagonist.
This story featured an incredible twist that completely unravels the protagonist, who faces an extremely heavy loss at the end of the story.
This one hit me the hardest!
“Do you know who gets justice? Only those who demand it.”
This story deals with the age-old problem of certain men who are unhappy about having only females as their heirs. It also casts a light on the terrible plight of certain women who have to be financially dependent on their husbands. The irresponsibility of these men is shocking and downright cruel.
This story left its mark on me. The scene where the village women coiled around the mutawalli like cobras and cursed him terribly felt surreal. It felt like a memory that isn’t mine and isn’t even real, but one that will be very difficult to forget.
Good story. Had all the drama of a typical small town/village Indian family.
While the idea of a man stuck between his jealous wife and his revered mother is very old, what makes this story good is the emotional roller-coaster you go on with the characters.
A decent story. Not a fan of the description of the khatana process.
“When there was so much poverty and misery around, was there a need to be inhumane too?”
“Khar ko Khuda ka yaar, gareen ko Parvardigaar”
The privileges of the rich and the problems of the poor make all the difference in their ways of living. In some instances, like the one captured in this story, the resilience shown by the poor people is awe-inspiring.
And we reach to the story that lends its title to this collection. Honestly, this one did not do it for me.
When women are exploited and do not have anyone to support them in their struggles, it is a truly shameful situation for society. This is what I believe the story wanted to explore. It covered the depths of loneliness and depression a woman has to go through when she needs to carry the entire weight of the world, and also defend herself from that very world. It also discussed how some women make the decision to end their lives instead of continuing to struggle.
I understood all that. But for me, there was something just lacking in it. In fact, this was such a forgettable story that I had to go through it again while writing a review about it.
And then there was a good story!
“What voice could possibly bride the cracks that were caused by silence?”
“Material things had become priceless, and human beings worthless”
Initially, it felt that one of the characters had a weird obsession with wanting his wife to wear high-heeled shoes, but it all started making sense as the story proceeded. The egoistic ways in which men want their wives to look so that their image shines brighter is one of the themes this story works with.
I felt that some characters throughout the collection were made to look weak just for the sake of the plot. And I definitely have that complaint with the character of the pregnant lady in this story. However, everything blends well till the ending of this story.
I was irritated the most by this story.
Here arises my problem with the usage of Indian English. The way this story moved from the present to the past, with the girl child taking over the narration, felt really clunky. For a while, I could not understand what I was reading.
But anyway, this was the worst story in this collection for me. I would not even care to expound on this.
After a bad taste in my mouth with the previous story came in this one. And it was delicious.
“Her body, her mind, her dreams, none were fulfilled. She remained an eternal virgin”
While there were repeated themes in this story, it felt unique as it showed the attachment the old lady had for her husband even after his death. True love truly blinds people when it emerges after being bottled up for ages. The old lady thinks she is in heaven when she tastes Pepsi, which she assumes is the drink of heaven. Great advertisement for Pepsi. Just kidding. Overall, I felt the story was simply beautiful.
One of my favorites in this collection!
“Money from the pockets of poor people was just like them, broken, shattered, crumpled, wrinkly, diminished in essence and form.”
This story really captured my fancy as it explored human behaviour. How the rich prove that they are right in a feud by simply waving their privilege in the face of the poor. How something that is the most important thing in the world for one person can be trivial in another person’s eyes.
Life has ways of sobering up individuals who are drunk on their arrogance and riches.
This one was average.
“Perhaps this is the working mother’s solution: trying to make up for the guilt of not being able to spend time with their children by giving them money and gifts.”.
There was a certain depth to this story that did appeal to me. But overall, it was a redundant story. In an ocean of similar stories, this one lost its identity very early on.
I feel that the author tried to prove with this story that men who oppress women can and will oppress them for any reason. In fact, they do not even need a reason, because if there is no reason to oppress, they will create one on their own.
This story wasn’t really impactful.
“I was only his wife, that is, free labour.”
“You gave me the strength to bear a lot of pain. But you should not have given him the cruelty to cause so much of it.”
I think that the concept of this generic story, which was a conversation with God, was to create the idea of how all women equally struggle in a patriarchal society. But this was so generic, so flat, that I was unable to feel anything after reading it. For me, it was just words on paper stitched together to tell a tale we’ve all heard several times.
Like many other readers, I too felt that most of these stories had a repeating theme. Quite a few stories didn’t really strike a chord with me. In fact, when the first story did not appeal to me, I felt that maybe I should’ve done a background check before diving into this book. Now, I am willing to admit that a few of these issues can stem from my ignorance of the ground-level issues, my inability to put myself in the shoes of the troubled, my position of privilege, and maybe even a certain lack of maturity.
However, what I am not willing to admit is that the usage of a certain flavour of Indian English was beneficial to this book. It just wasn’t! While some readers cannot stop praising the Indian English used in this book, I am of the exact opposite opinion. I believe that rather than providing the readers an authentic and unadulterated experience of the source work, it turned out to be an unappealing version, which was a hit and a miss. It was easy to read, but it wasn’t much fun. And I cannot even begin to imagine the efforts the westerners might have to put in to understand the cultural context along with this type of language. I’m not against the usage of Indian English, not at all; in fact, I love it when authors like Salman Rushdie use it to enhance the structure of sentences and provide a certain depth to their storytelling.
The book delved into and dealt with themes like the systemic oppression of women, the ill effects of patriarchy and religious extremism, gender and income inequality, societal pressures, emotional turbulences, depression and paralysis in the face of an uncertain future and an undeniable past.
Overall, I believe that Banu Mushtaq’s 12-story collection was an average read. I would recommend it to people who would want to understand the trials and tribulations faced by a certain section of women in India. But to anyone coming in with the intention of reading a classical literary work, I would ask you not to get your hopes up with this one.