Heart Lamp: Selected Stories

by Banu Mushtaq

‘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.

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

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?

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.’

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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?’

‘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.’

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