Heart Lamp

In the opening story, ‘Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal,’ the characters are talking about death, specifically the death of a wife. One of the characters, Shaista says, ‘Yes, my grandmother used to say that when a wife dies, it’s like an elbow injury for the husband. Do you know Zeenat, if the elbow gets injured, 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. There is no wound, no blood, no scar, no pain…’ (page 12). Why do you think Shaista says this, and is it an accurate characterisation of many of the male figures in the book?

Banu Mushtaq wrote the short stories that appear in Heart Lamp between 1990 and 2023, a period of 33 years. Did you have a sense while reading that there are differences in the writing style or subject matter, reflective of a body of work that has evolved over three decades?

In an interview with the Booker Prizes, Mushtaq said, ‘My stories are about women – how religion, society, and politics demand unquestioning obedience from them, and in doing so, inflict inhumane cruelty upon them, turning them into mere subordinates.’ Despite this cruelty, did you feel that the women in the book possessed hope and strength to survive their circumstances?

In the Translator’s Note, Deepa Bhasthi said that she has retained specific cultural terms in the book, leaving them untranslated. She also avoided footnotes and did not italicise Kannada, Urdu and Arabic words, in order to avoid exoticising them. ‘By not italicising them, I hope the reader can come to these words without interference, and in the process of reading with the flow, perhaps even learn a new word or two in another language’ (214). Did you find it difficult to understand the untranslated words within the broader context of the sentence or story, or did they add something to the reading experience?

Banu Mushtaq has had a full career as a writer, journalist, lawyer, and activist in several protest literary circles. How might Mushtaq’s background in activism have contributed to the creation of the stories in Heart Lamp?

In the story ‘A Decision of the Heart’, Yusuf’s wife, Akhila, is extremely jealous of the close relationship that her husband has with his mother, referring to the old woman as a vulture, a plague and a whore. But after getting told off by her husband’s mother, Akhila cries and apologises for her actions, confusing both her husband and his mother. Why do you think Akhila showed such remorse?

The short story ‘Heart Lamp’ is based on Mushtaq’s own experiences. As she told Vogue India, ‘“One day, I doused myself with white petrol kept in a can at home to clean watches since my in-laws had a watch-cum-spectacle shop,” she recalls. “With a matchbox in my hand and ready to strike, it was my husband, who I had married for love, who clung to me and kept our three-month-old daughter at my feet, telling me to stop.”’ Knowing the heartbreaking reality of this story, does it make you see the story in a new way?

In ‘A Taste of Heaven’, when the children gave Bi Dadi Pepsi to drink, Sana told Bi Dadi that she was having the drink of heaven and that she was now in heaven. Why do you think Bi Dadi had such a strong reaction to the Pepsi and blindly went along with what the children were saying?

In the story, ‘Red Lungi’, one group of boys gets circumcised by traditional methods, while another, more privileged group has the procedure done by medical intervention. It’s shown that a boy who underwent the traditional method, Arif, healed successfully in a short time, while a wealthier boy, Samad, took longer to heal and felt more pain. Samad’s mother Razia was visibly upset and said that ‘if there are people to help the rich, the poor have god’ (Page 98). Why do you think Arif’s wounds healed more quickly, and does Razia’s comment ring true, in this story and elsewhere in the book?