I never expected my stories would appeal to Booker jury: Banu Mushtaq

Banu Mushtaq begins by reading aloud a story from her International Booker-nominated short story collection, Heart Lamp, titled “The Arabic Teacher and Gobi Manchuri.” The story is about a lawyer who hires an Arabic teacher, who is very fond of Gobi Manchuri, for her two young daughters, and a series of unexpected events that ensue because of the teacher’s obsession with the cauliflower dish.

The activist, lawyer, and writer, at a recent book discussion at Champaca Bookstore, says, “I just wanted to express in this story about a mother’s duty and compulsion to educate her girl children.”

This “slightly funny story, even with a dark undercurrent,” as writer and editor Kavya Murthy, who moderated the session, puts it, sets the tone for the rest of the evening, as Mushtaq, her translator Deepa Bhasthi, and Murthy discuss the book, its Booker nomination, the stereotypical depiction of Muslim characters in literature and the intricacies of language and translation, among other things.

“The most interesting thing for me as a Kannada speaker is that in this story we are very much in regional Karnataka, in the homes and places that are not frequently talked about,” notes Murthy, before asking Mushtaq, “How important, as a writer, is it for you to make sure that a reader understands where you are located?”

Mushtaq says it isn’t just about where but also about a “glimpse of what you are.” According to her, during the 1980s, there were several social movements such as Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha and Dalita Sangharsha Samiti, and literary movements like the Bandaya Sahitya movement, theatre activism and feminist movements, all of which often coalesced together. “I am a product of those movements,” says Mushtaq, whose hometown, Hassan itself, was one of the centres of such struggles.

Her many influences

As a budding writer, Mushtaq knew that she wanted to write, but “what shall I write?” was a huge question before her. Whose story she wanted to document, and the circumstances surrounding these characters were unknown to her. “I didn’t know how I should frame these characters, and what I wanted to say through these characters.”

In her opinion, other writers such as Fakir Muhammad Katpadi, Sara Aboobacker, and Bolwar Mahammad Kunhi all faced the same critical issue. “Till then, in Kannada literature, Muslim characters were depicted in black and white. Either they were very beautiful, good people, or villainous characters,” says the spry 77-year-old. “There was no grey area. I was just confused.”

“I started thinking about it, and posed this question to literary people in our workshops,” she says. “They guided me and told me to write about your people… yourself… your surroundings… your feasts… your joys and sorrows and challenges.”

That is how she started writing, over five decades ago. “I started to write as a woman, my identity even today, and started challenging the inequalities,” says Mushtaq, who constantly questioned the idea of the “mainstream” in her stories. “Whether it was a kitchen, a mosque or a house, I started to speak through the voice of a woman, and that too, a Muslim woman.”

Of language and meaning

The discussion then veers towards the polyphony in Kannada literature, which “is not just one sound,” says Murthy, referring to the translator’s note in the book that offers insights into the Bandaya Sahitya movement. The movement, which started in the 1970s and 80s as “an act of protest against the hegemony of upper caste and mostly male-led writing that was being published and celebrated,” writes Bhasthi.

She also points out that it urged women, Dalits and other social and religious minorities to tell stories from within their own lived experiences and in the Kannada they spoke. “Of the many Kannadas that exist, theirs was dismissed as folksy, in contrast to the ‘prestige dialect’ from the Old Mysore region that remains most used in popular culture,” states the note.

Murthy comments on the “changing register of language” and how the short stories capture the nuances of Mushtaq’s language style. “You can hear that Kannada language in your translation, which is quite a hard feat…,” she tells Bhasthi, who responds by talking about how polyglossic our languages are. “Maybe, in Bengaluru, you’re used to listening to or speaking in English, but the moment you get out of the city, we are all living in multiple languages,” she says.

In Hassan, for instance, where Mushtaq is from, “there must be four or five languages, which you interact with. So, I think it was very important for me to bring this idea of multiple languages.” continues Bhasthi, who was also very clear that she didn’t want the book to be in “proper English, whatever proper English is because none of us speaks proper English.” The book has been translated explicitly for Indian readers, and she wants them to understand that “this translation comes from a certain culture and language, so it is a very deliberate English I use that has a very distinct Kannada hum to it.”

Relationships at the core

Human relationships, core to the stories in Heart Lamp, were discussed in some detail at the event, with Bhasthi, who selected the stories, expanding on what drew her to them. The stories are about different relationships within a family setup, “because nothing is probably as political as the family,” she says. Since family, in many ways, is a political battlefield, “each of the relationships that the characters deal with, in these stories, attempt to reflect how relationships can be seen, negotiated and understood,” she says.

She also points to the universality of these stories, even though they are set in a particular context and community. “It is interesting how all of us who identify as women face the same kind of pressures from patriarchal diktats or religion,” she says. “These are issues that women face all over the world because patriarchy is not restricted to Muslim, Indian or South Asian communities.”

Bhasthi’s views are echoed by Murthy, who describes the stories as having a “timeless quality” about them. “You can’t tell which is older, which is newer, because they are very intimate.” Mushtaq attributes her world-building both to the various social and literary movements that have shaped her and the many Muslim women she knows who “have created history and are heroes, but continue to remain in darkness.” She continues, “I know them, their stories, their struggles…”

Mushtaq also admits that the Booker nomination surprised her because she saw these stories as very specific to Hassan in Karnataka. “I just wanted it to be published in English, but I never expected that these stories would appeal to the Booker jury,” she says. “They understood the circumstances, the culture, the thought process, the environment and the turmoil. That is the great thing.”