Heart Lamp: The Light Exploring Love, Loss, Resilience and Identity of South Indian Muslim Women

               Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, the winner of International Booker Prize for Kannada language is a defining chapter in the revolutionary literary history of Indian women writers. It represents the experiences of Muslim and Dalit women in South India which softly brighten out plights of Indian Muslim women, spotting gender-based injustices in Muslim communities. It is a collection of 12 short stories written in regional language of Kannada and translated by Deepa Bhasti which peeps into the lives of Southern Muslim women and girls. It centers on cruelty of religion, society, and politics which demand absolute obedience of women for smooth running of silent patriarchal power turning them into voiceless carriers of social norms. All these short stories, contemporary narrative of women’s emotional world absolutely unexplored and unhindered by the Indian women writers. Heat Lamp is considered as a masterpiece of representation of Indian women's resilience against physical, emotional, and psychological violence, and their fight against restrictions under the cover of societal and religious norms reveals depth of their resilience and raises the question of women’s identity in Indian society.