About
Author: Banu Mushtaq (India)
Genre: Social
Setting
Place: Karnataka, India
Time: 1950s-2000s
My Rating (see what this means)
My Subjective Rating: 3
My ‘Objective’ Rating: 2.58
Introduction
In a sense, the protagonists of Banu Mushtaq‘s short story collection ‘Heart Lamp’ are not protagonists at all, but simply observers of their fate. For despite their strong preferences and wants and hopes from life, they rarely are offered the agency to achieve those.
‘Do you know who gets justice?’ the writer asks in one of her stories, ‘only those who demand it.’
Unfortunately the demands of the protagonists in her story often fell on deaf ears. Centred around the life of Muslim women in southern India – and set across much the lifetime of independent India, the chunk of the stories in the book offers a horrify reality of the lives and times of women.
Not all stories are grim, some, even though tragedies net-net have their built in comedies – but these wouldn’t leave you with an uplifted mood. Heart Lamp still deserves a read for it is an important documentation of the challenges women have faced and which many continue to face.
Synopsis
Narrated mostly in the first person – but with jumping protagonists – what Heart Lamp does best is paint its characters – the good and the ugly. There is a certain elegance to the flow even as these stories are somewhat jumpy – morphing from one character’s tale to one of an entirely different character with their own set of problems.
The language/translation is somewhat raw – but pleasant. And while a couple stories challenge plausibility – the collections remain rooted in a reality – where despite the conventionally differences between a Muslim household from a Hindu household I grew up in – there is a sense of, I don’t know whether, Indianness or universality which can pull the reader in.
Whenever I read a book that has won the man-booker award – I inevitably weigh it against one of my favourite books of all time – Arundathi Roy’s God of Small Things. Heart Lamp doesn’t have any of its intricate, if complex beauty and the elegance of writing style that characterize Roy’s writing. I think Heart Lamp cannot compete with it – but it is not trying to either. It’s simplicity is it strength.
Picture Credits:
- Cover Picture: https://scroll.in/latest/1017617/hijab-ban-is-disturbing-mental-health-of-muslim-girls-petitioner-tells-karnataka-hc