Heart Lamp – A survival song and an existential saga

I found out about Heart Lamp winning the International Booker Prize at 6 am the morning after the announcement, mostly because I had a school run for my high-schooler and was checking my phone to see the time. The news flashed on my google feed, my Instagram timeline, as headlines on my dashboard – the thrill of its euphoria blowing up my display. Perhaps the AI cleverly embedded in my phone’s ingenious memory circuits knew that coincidentally I had finished reading the book, (and most importantly the eponymous story that gave it its title), just the evening before. Maybe because I had texted a friend to convey that I was finally done with it and that I was blown by the understated power, the no-fuss resilience, the quiet strength of the women who lived within its pages.   

In the half-light of dawn, I scrolled feverishly through the headlines and listened, breathless and proud, to Banu Mustaq’s acceptance speech, spoken with eloquence, sincerity and unwavering conviction in the strength and power of not only her own narratives but in the ethereal quality of literature that makes it transcend the ordinary and the base, and lets us take flight to inhabit and co-exist with realities completely different from our own.

“…This book was born from the belief that no story is ever ‘small’ – that in the tapestry of human experience, every thread holds the weight of the whole. In a world that often tries to divide us, literature remains one of the last sacred spaces where we can live inside each other’s minds, if only for a few pages. To every reader who trusted me with their time: thank you for letting my words wander into your heart…”

And these stories did just that – they wandered into my heart. These are everyday stories, about women who live out the grime, grit and grind of their ordinary rural, mofussil or suburban lives – told with an almost folklore-ish cadence, and a whiff of old morality plays, even tinged sometimes with a bit of magic realism – in High Heeled Shoes, one woman’s triumph in quashing the hold of her tight, ill-fitting stilettoes that had been foisted on her with characteristic indifference by her husband, is shown like a physical victory as she literally rises above the engorging darkness of the dreary patriarchy surrounding her - and often times, told with a kind of candid directness which makes the tragedy of the women’s unchanging predicament stand out in sharp relief. In the stark, potent and powerful Heart Lamp, the agony of a scorned middle-aged mother, rejected by her family, flung aside by her husband, is razor-sharp. In a final act of despair, as she prepares to spray herself with kerosene, the crescendo of grief and the violence of rejection build gradually, without drama or hyperbole.

Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal, the very first story in this remarkable collection, stopped me in my tracks – how deftly and seamlessly it wove a tale of rupture and loss – of a woman, worn out and depleted by the strain of repeated childbirths, outwardly feted by her husband for her good looks and fertile womb, but in reality left unattended when her medical needs were dire, who is cast away into oblivion, replaced and rolled away like a discarded cot.   

Even though the stories, evocatively translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi, are rooted in South Indian Muslim communities scattered across the region, they can be the existential saga of everywoman, the survival song of an entire female milieu. What stands out despite the oppression and struggle brimming within the pages, is also the indomitable spirit of the women - even the most harridan-like among them or the most scheming - are endowed with fire and brimstone – they know how to survive and survive they will. Their willpower and agency against the face of all odds are what make Heart Lamp, the first short story collection and the first original work in Kannada to win an International Booker, a daisy chain of both folly and fortitude.

JLF London at the British Library 2025 (June 13th -15th; https://jlflitfest.org/london) is fortunate to feature Banu Mustaq, writer, lawyer, activist, and a champion of the rights of women from underserved communities, along with gifted translator, Deepa Bhasthi, at a session on their award-winning book. And I am sure there are so many questions on so many people’s minds, waiting to be aired out and asked, like the ‘thousand fireflies lighting up a single sky’ Banu talked about when she opened her speech at the International Booker Prize ceremony.