Heart Lamp, written by Banu Mushtaq and translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi, winning the International Booker Prize for translated fiction is heartening for a number of reasons. Heart Lamp has many firsts to its credit and has done the nation proud. This is the first collection of short stories to have won the International Booker; Ms Mushtaq is the first author writing in Kannada to win this honour; Ms Bhasthi has become the first Indian translator to have tasted Booker success. Coming three years after Tomb of Sand — the labour of love of Geetanjali Shree and Daisy Rockwell — won the same award, Heart Lamp not only reaffirms the depth and the beauty of Indian languages but also signifies enduring global interest in and a thriving market for such literary outputs. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that the triumphs of Heart Lamp and Tomb of Sand are tantamount to a celebration of the richness of India’s linguistic diversity. There is a lesson in this for those who indulge in linguistic chauvinism or demand the imposition of a national language on other tongues. Diversity — literary and otherwise — remains one of India’s civilisational strengths.
In the course of her acceptance speech, Ms Mushtaq had *thanked readers for letting her “words wander into [their] hearts”. This journey of the words that she crafted would not, of course, have been possible without dexterous translation serving as the proverbial bridge between languages, settings, cultures. Heart Lamp’s success should encourage many more gifted translators to come forward and mine the goldmines that are Indian languages. The lives that Ms Mushtaq explores in the short stories that make up Heart Lamp — those of Muslim women in India — are equally topical. This is because political and ideological assaults on India’s pluralist ethos — these have corresponded with the electoral dominance of Hindutva politics in recent years — have led to the marginalisation, even demonisation, of the lives and the challenges faced by India’s minorities. Ms Mushtaq’s book could prod readers to re-engage with urgent questions regarding the discriminations based on faith, gender, and caste. There, though, must be a word reserved for the magic of literature. In a world deeply fractured along numerous fault lines, it is literary writing that continues to provide space, albeit a diminishing one, for conversation on differences. This fragile but crucial space must be nurtured.