Reflections

  I was amazed at how easy it was to lean into you while your arm claimed my waist on that bench. Your palm was pressed against my skin, under my sweater, pulling me closer, tighter. For once, the slowing of time in my body didn’t embarrass me. You had known me first, though you were yet to know me. I reckoned that now was a good time. In the middle of our conversation, when I was least expecting it, you kissed me. After all these years of wondering, it felt surprisingly familiar. I remember how your lips lingered against mine, how your smell was exactly as I had imagined it. It felt less like a beginning and more like something resumed, as if we did this every day. I marvelled at how tactile you were, all through the evening. Touch seemed to be your chosen language—your arm brushing mine, your thigh comfortably resting against my leg, your hand reaching out to press my knee whenever you needed to feel me next to you. I welcomed it. It was endearing. I have had enough of wo...

  Heart Lamp Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhashti I finished reading  Heart Lamp  within a week of receiving it. In a time when sustained attention feels increasingly elusive, completing twelve short stories over seven days felt like a big win. As I read, I kept asking myself why I stayed with the book so steadily. The answer emerged gradually: the deeper I went, the more I was drawn into the lives of the men and women portrayed in these stories, and into the social worlds they inhabited. Reading them took me back to my own childhood—growing up as a young girl in a rural village in southern India, with rules and ways of living clearly charted out for her. Almost every story carried traces of my life or the lives of women I have known. Heart Lamp  is a selected collection of twelve short stories written in Kannada over three decades (1990–2023) by Banu Mushtaq, translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi. I recently listened to Bhasthi speak at a literature festival, wh...