Heart Lamp: Selected Stories

This sisterhood to which those of us who identify as women belong is the cushion I place my translation on. The coping mechanisms we devise, the solutions we find and the adjustments we make around men are survival strategies nurtured across generations. The particulars may be different, but at the core is a resistance to being controlled, ‘tamed’, or disallowed the exploration of our full potential. These experiences, both Banu and I believe, can be found anywhere in the world. Some of us step on the cindering balls of coal and carve a space for ourselves. Some of us learn to exist too close to the fire. None of us are left unscarred. __ Translator's Afterword

I was very deliberate in my choice to not use italics for the Kannada, Urdu and Arabic words that remain untranslated in English. Italics serve to not only distract visually, but more importantly, they announce words as imported from another language, exoticising them and keeping them alien to English. 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. Same goes for footnotes - there are none. Against Italics: Translator's Notes

Do you know who gets justice? Only those who demand it. People like you will not get justice if you don’t demand it.

The chasm between them grew wider. What voice could possibly bridge the cracks that were caused by silence? They caved in on themselves.

If you were to build the world again, to create males and females again, do not be like an inexperienced potter. Come to earth as a woman, Prabhu!

my grandmother used to say that when a wife dies, it's like an elbow injury for the husband, ... 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 . . .

Can one eat pain, Dadima?’ Ajji stopped talking and stared at me for a minute. As if she was addressing someone else, she said, ‘Correct, isn’t it? One should eat pain and give happiness.

A little while after she had gone, Latif Ahmad began to feel uneasy. When there was so much poverty and misery around, was there a need to be inhumane too?

Was it a Hindu corpse? Was it a Muslim corpse? The body was too rotten to be identified. Should it rot here, should it rot there?

Akhila, may you also have the good fortune of having your children arrange your wedding,’ and spat out enough bitterness for a lifetime.

At least we had not created another helpless prisoner of life like me. Instead of someone who had to live pathetically, without stability, a son was born, who could step ahead proudly, in full arrogance of being male.

This matter would’ve ended there, if only she’d given it some thought.

But no one thinks of the Taj Mahal as a grave. They consider it a mohabbat ki nishani, a symbol of love. ' Mujahid did not let the matter go and retorted: 'Yes, yes, symbol of dead love.' 'But loves does not die, Mujahid.

People behave in strange and illogical ways when they're afraid they may have to take responsibility.

Suppose there comes a situation where the husband's body is full of sores , with pus and blood oozing out of from them , it is said that even if the wife uses her tongue to lick these wounds clean , she will still not be able to completely repay the debt

he sometimes thought that perhaps a jinn had stepped on her.

Jaffar Baba slowly lifted his neck, looked at Ajji and asked, ‘Do you know, Jamaal Bi, why this whole world, the sun, the moon, the sky and stars have been created?

Call the world a small place, or call it big, say that the world is round, giggle hehehe and say the world has become a small village… say something! No matter what you say, it makes little difference.

Khar ku Khuda ka yaar, gareeb ku parvardigaar’ – if there are people to help the rich, the poor have God.

There is no end to the woes mothers face come summer vacation. All the children are at home; if they’re not in front of the TV, then they’re either up the guava tree in the front yard or on top of the compound wall, and what if one of them falls and breaks a hand? Or leg? But it’s not just that, no: it’s all the crying, the laughter, the meting-out of punishments based on some arcane system of justice from another world.

Hatim Taayi. ‘Once upon a time there lived a queen in a town. She was very proud of her beauty. A horde of men hung around for love of her, but she did not pay them any attention. She liked no one, and twirled everyone around her little finger. Her job was to give difficult tasks to the men who approached her; she enjoyed watching them suffer.

not all blooms have the fortune of adorning a bride; some flowers bloom only for mausoleums.

For forty days after the birth, forty graves have their mouths open for the baby and the new mother. With every passing day, one grave closes its mouth. Is it a small thing for a new life to be born from a body? It is like the mother getting a new life herself,’ Amma used to say.