Heart Lamp: Selected Stories - A Review

Heart Lamp: Selected Stories by Banu Mushtaq, awarded the International Booker Prize 2025 is a rewarding collection of tales dealing primarily with the lives of Muslim women and their neglect, oppression and commoditization in a deeply patriarchal structure noted for its social constraints and cultural codification.

- DR AJANTA PAUL

Heart Lamp: Selected Stories by Banu Mushtaq, awarded the International Booker Prize 2025 is a rewarding collection of tales dealing primarily with the lives of Muslim women and their neglect, oppression and commoditization in a deeply patriarchal structure noted for its social constraints and cultural codification. Women in such a set-up are shown to have no agency whatsoever, being or becoming the victims of a type of chattel slavery that, never acceptable, is particularly anachronistic in modern times.

Zeenat, the young bride in the opening story "Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal" states, "Suppose there comes a situation where the husband's body is full of sores with pus and blood oozing out from them, it is said even if the wife uses her tongue to lick the wounds clean, she will still not be able to completely repay the debt she owes him. If he's a drunkard, or a womanizer, or if he harasses her for dowry every day - even if all these "ifs" are true, he is still the husband...it is accepted that the wife is the husband's most obedient servant, his bonded labourer", (p 8) emphasizing the unequal balance of power between the sexes early on in the collection.

A woman is merely a provider of services, as the author sees it, first in the parental home and then in the marital arrangement. She is used for her child bearing and rearing contribution, and is never shown to have the slightest value beyond these biological and economic functions. It is a world where the man can do no wrong. Even if he errs, his sin is quickly forgiven and he is promptly rehabilitated in a society which turns a blind eye to male transgressions, expecting the woman to make all adjustments, compromises and sacrifices.