The Blitz of Trauma in Heart Lamp: Interrogations of the Ages

Abstract

Trauma is a psychological index of one's mental make-up and physical infliction leading to final catastrophe of individual. It has been available in the world of literature right from its inception in different forms. Sometimes, it is in the form of a defective social structure, sometimes it is in the form of gender disparity, sometimes it is termed as racial discrimination, sometimes based on language, region, religion, etc. – but, all the time it is self-created – a man-made disaster. In the novel Heart Lamp Banu Mustaq dwells on the Muslim society, especially the Muslim woman. Crusade for the cause of women has been a subject of deliberation for the intellectuals and the custodians of the society: Banu Mustaq stands in the same row, with her Heart Lamp, the winner of the International Booker Prize, 2025, with her twelve stories, originally written in Kannad, and translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi. Each story speaks volumes, centered on the predicament of the Muslim women: in different phases of her life – in the name of religion, culture, social obligation, and other prevalent prescriptions of life. It is the voice of the marginalized section of the society, usually termed as the other, the weaker, the subaltern, the disempowered, the excluded, the belittled, the ostracized, etc. Such concern has been identified differently by litterateur: as gender issue, as patriarchal mess, as power imbalance, as intersectionality, as thwarted rebellion, as identity contest, etc. This paper intends to establish the need to demolish the perception regarding women in general and that of Muslim in particular, projecting the present, with a mission to have a better morrow, of a balanced social structure of sane and rational equations