Latest news with #LankeshPatrike
Time of India
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Banu Mushtaq brought honour to Karnataka: Prakash Raj
Mysuru: Actor-activist Prakash Raj on Friday hailed Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq for bringing laurels to Kannada by winning the first International Booker Prize for Kannada. It was an honour for the Kannada intellectual who also brought pride to Karnataka, he said. He was speaking after Banu was felicitated at a function organised in the city by Abhiruchi Publications which celebrated its 30 years. Raj recalled that he came to know Banu when she was writing for Kannada tabloid Lankesh Patrike. Mushtaq wrote stories in Kannada depicting women-centric struggles, injustice and discrimination against women and explained her inner voice in her writings. Kannada writer Latha Mysuru highlighted the resistance from some Muslim community members during Banu's initial years of writing. Her family not only faced ostracism but was also boycotted, prevented and restricted by her writings. However, the writer overcame such struggles and penned more than 40 books, including fiction, novels, and collections of short stories during her 40-year literary career, she said. Banu thanked the International Booker Prize selection committee jurists for selecting her short stories. Recalling her Mysuru connection, Banu said she studied in a primary school in KRS, where her father served as a health inspector. She also stressed the need to protect the heritage buildings of Mysuru like the United Kingdom protected its heritage structures. There are a lot of similarities between London and Mysuru, like its palaces and its salubrious environment. Banu said she would continue to fight against injustice and inequality as a writer and advocate. Historian PV Nanjaraje Urs, state information commissioner Harish Kumar and publisher BN Sriram were present.
The Hindu
04-07-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Review of anthology The Sour Mango Tree
It is intriguing that P. Lankesh (1935-2000), an iconoclastic modernist Kannada writer and public intellectual, showed little interest in making his works accessible to a wider audience through translation. Unlike his contemporaries U.R. Ananthamurthy and Girish Karnad, who embraced global platforms and saw their works rendered into English, Lankesh, much like his kindred spirit K.P. Purnachandra Tejasvi, chose to be a local cosmopolitan. Lankesh's life and writings, however, undeniably merit a wider reach. Thanks to Nataraj Huliyar and a group of excellent translators, the carefully selected and translated anthology, The Sour Mango Tree, makes for an ideal introduction to Lankesh's oeuvre. The collection features excerpts from his autobiography, Hulimavina Mara (The Sour Mango Tree), two plays, Giliyu Panjaradolilla (The Bird is not in the Cage) and Gunamukha (Recovery), besides select short fiction, prose, and poetry. Lankesh was a politically committed writer who, more often than not, practised what the Greeks called parrhesia — telling truth to power structures. Apart from expressing his thoughts and worldview through works of art, Lankesh actively critiqued his era as the editor of Lankesh Patrike, a weekly tabloid, from 1980 until he died in 2000. The Patrike, a runaway success, became a platform for literary activism, fostering emerging voices such as Huliyar, Sara Aboobacker, B.T. Lalitha Naik, Vaidehi and Banu Mushtaq, among others. Its influence profoundly shaped the sensibilities of an entire generation. Taking caste head-on This anthology includes essays from Lankesh's acclaimed 'Teeke Tippani' (Comments and Notes) column penned for the magazine. Spanning politics, literature, sports, philosophy, and figures such as the Buddha and Ambedkar, these pieces shaped the political consciousness of readers while refashioning Kannada prose as a tool for social criticism. Gandhi and Lohia indeed loom large in the unconscious of Lankesh's writerly life. One standout essay, 'Us and Them', translated with sensitivity by Lankesh's close associate Basavaraj Urs, offers a Gandhian perspective on the Ayodhya and Babri Masjid conflict, written two years before the mosque's demolition. As a Lohiaite socialist, Lankesh grappled with the phenomenology of caste practices. His searing short story 'Muttisikondavaru' (The Touch) confronts untouchability, using illness as a metaphor — where physical affliction mirrors a deeper spiritual decay. Basalinga, a simpleton farmer, gets his ailing left eye operated on by Doctor Thimmappa, who is a Dalit. On learning about the doctor's caste, his mental ailments begin, tortured by the impurity of touch. This story illustrates how caste practices deeply entrenched in Indian ethos become natural essence, overriding reason and rationality. Basalinga's troubled eye cannot see the doctor's expertise but his caste identity. Lankesh's framing of social ills as universal tales of the human condition, in which, he believed, man is inherently evil, reminds one of Saadat Hasan Manto, who transmuted the trauma of Partition into metaphysical irony and dark humour. A female pseudonym too The mastery of this framing is on full display in his play Gunamukha, a tour de force based on Persian emperor Nadir Shah's life in Delhi. The physical illness of the emperor becomes a lens for his mental torment, born of his hubris. When Nadir Shah summons Alavi, a hakim (healer), to treat his ailments, the healer diagnoses the root cause of his illness: the emperor's arrogance that renders him deaf to people's suffering. The way Lankesh dramatises the exchanges between both characters, especially the last scene excerpted so well in this book, remains unmatched in modern Indian theatre. Though Gunamukha could not amass the power of performance in the national theatre, commanding stages like Delhi's Purana Qila, it is no less a classic than Karnad's Tughlaq. Lankesh's prose further illuminates his brilliance, offering fresh perspectives on texts like Babur's Babarnama, Tejasvi's Carvalho, and writers, including Bertolt Brecht. His poetry, too, reads the world and literary classics differently. In one of three poems on Anna Karenina included here, he thus illuminates: Helen and Anna/ Karenina turned/ adultery into love/ shaped yearning into/ a basic emotion. His 'Neelu' poems, short poetic lines composed under a female pseudonym, are arguably naughty but aesthetically appealing and thoughtful. While Lankesh's political outlook inspires us to be critical of our times, his literary corpus makes him one of the masters of Indian literature. His relevance, therefore, compels us to demand comprehensive translations of his works, particularly his autobiography, fiction and Gunamukha. The reviewer, a NIF Translation fellow, teaches English literature at Tumkur University. His forthcoming book is a translation of D.R. Nagaraj's Allama Prabhu and the Shaiva Imagination.
The Hindu
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Signed copies of book in London in Kannada, says Booker prize winner Banu Mushtaq
International Booker award recipient Banu Mushtaq was felicitated by the Karnataka Union of Working Journalists in Bengaluru on May 28. Banu Mushtaq, a writer, lawyer and activist, began writing about her people, their joys, sorrows and anxieties, over five decades ago. On May 20, Heart Lamp, a collection of 12 short stories selected from her work written between 1990 and 2023 and translated by Deepa Bhasthi, won the International Booker Prize for 2025. During the felicitation, among other things, she shared her experience of travelling to London. 'In London, whoever approached me to sign their copy of 'Heart Lamp', I signed them in Kannada. The other shortlisted writers were masters degree holders. I was the only one to be a grassroots writer.' Apart from being a renowned writer, she is an advocate by profession. However, she started her career as a journalist for the Lankesh Patrike, and had a four decade-long stint in journalism. 'Heart Lamp' was a major success in the field of literature earning a huge profit of ₹6 crore for Penguin publishers. Heart lamp will be translated to 35 languages. According to Banu Mushtaq, 'People, irrespective of caste, race and community, were celebrating my success. Following the success of the book, many filmmakers had approached me for film rights.' Girish Kasaravalli, a renowned director, made a film based on Kari Nagaragalu, one of the short stories in the book. The film was called Hasina, and won a national award for best actor. Banu Mushtaq will be felicitated by the government of Karnataka at Vidhana Soudha on June 2.
Hindustan Times
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
‘Like a thousand fireflies lighting the sky'
Banu Mushtaq wrote her first short story when she was in middle school in Karnataka's Hassan town in the 1950s. That journey came full circle on Wednesday as the 77-year-old writer, lawyer and activist scripted history by winning the international booker prize along with her translator Deepa Bhasthi, becoming the first Kannada writer to clinch the prestigious award. The winning book, Heart Lamp – a collection of 12 short stories written over a period of 30 years that exquisitely captured the everyday lives of Muslim women in Karnataka with wit and poise – beat five other titles from around the world. It is the first short story collection to win the annual prize that honours the best fiction translated into English. 'This moment feels like a thousand fireflies lighting a single sky -- brief, brilliant and utterly collective,' Mushtaq said at a ceremony at the Tate Modern gallery in London. 'This book is my love letter to the idea that no story is local or small…to write in Kannada is to inherit a legacy of cosmic wonder and earthly wisdom.' Bhashti added, 'What a win this is for my beautiful language.' She became the first Indian translator to win the International Booker. This is the second Indian book to win the international booker prize in three years after Geetanjali Shree and translator Daisy Rockwell won the 2022 award for Tomb of Sand (Ret Samadhi). The writer and the translator receive 25,000 pounds each. 'Heart Lamp is something genuinely new for English readers. A radical translation which ruffles language, to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes. These beautiful, busy, life-affirming stories rise from Kannada, interspersed with the extraordinary socio-political richness of other languages and dialects. It speaks of women's lives, reproductive rights, faith, caste, power and oppression,' said jury chair Max Porter. A celebrated name in Karnataka, Mushtaq started writing in the 1970s and blazed a trail with her outspoken advocacy of women's rights and freedoms, attracting a volley of threats, social boycotts, and even surviving a knife attack. Her internal turmoil, often reflected in her protagonists, once brought her on the brink of taking her life in her late 20s as a young mother, but she survived that too. 'My stories are about women – how religion, society, and politics demand unquestioning obedience from them, and in doing so, inflict inhumane cruelty upon them, turning them into mere subordinates,' she told the Booker Prize in an interview. Her early grounding in the progressive movements in Karnataka served as the foundation for her decades-long body of work. She worked with Lankesh Patrike, a noted Kannada newspaper, for close to a decade, and one of her stories was adapted by director Girish Kasaravalli into a National Award winning film, Hasina, in 2004. 'The daily incidents reported in the media and the personal experiences I have endured have been my inspiration. The pain, suffering, and helpless lives of these women create a deep emotional response within me, compelling me to write,' Mushtaq added. Born in 1948 in Karnataka's Hassan town, Mushtaq grew up in a large Muslim family and initially went to an Urdu medium school before joining a Kannada language institution at the age of eight, quickly learning the regional language within a month. Her father, a government health inspector in the erstwhile Mysore state, encouraged her writing and bought her books in Kannada, despite their precarious financial situation. Her writing began when she was in school, but it was after she was married at 26, when her first short story appeared in the popular Kannada magazine Prajamata. In early interviews, she spoke about the indelible influence of her father and his constant support in her rebellion against the authoritarian atmosphere of her school. As she grew older and then started teaching, she fought back a pincer attack of patriarchy and community norms that muzzled her independence. She defied social expectations by marrying a man of her choice in 1974 but quickly felt overwhelmed by the orthodox gaze of her in-laws. 'One day, we had a terrible fight and I decided to commit suicide. I went to our room and poured petrol all over my body. I was just about to light a match and set myself on fire when my husband grabbed my hand and stopped me. He asked me why I was doing this to myself. I explained my mental anguish to him,' she said in a 2010 interview. As she broke free of shackles, her family also battled perennial financial woes for some time, forcing her to sew clothes for money and her husband to work in a watch repair shop. She wrote sporadically over the next decade, coming into her own only by the 1980s. During this time, she travelled across the state and found her footing in the Bandaya Sahitya movement, a progressive protest literary circle that challenged caste and class oppression. 'The 1970s was a decade of movements in Karnataka – the Dalit movement, farmers' movement, language movement, rebellion movement, women's struggles, environmental activism, and theatre, activities among others, had a profound impact on me,' Mushtaq said. 'My direct engagement with the lives of marginalised communities, women, and the neglected, along with their expressions, gave me the strength to write. Overall, the social conditions of Karnataka shaped me,' she added. In the early 2000s, her advocacy of women's entry into mosques brought her into the crosshairs of social conservatives who ordered a social boycott for three months, a diktat that sparked a string of threats and a knife attack on her. Mushtaq has written six volumes of short stories, apart from a novel, a book of poems and another of essays. She won the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award, among others. Bhasthi is a distinguished writer, literary translator, and cultural critic, whose translation of K Shivarama Karanth's novel, The Same Village The Same Tree, was published in 2022, followed by Fate's Game and Other Stories, a collection of short stories by K Gouramma in 2023. 'With Banu's stories, I first read all the fiction she had published before I narrowed it down to the ones that are in Heart Lamp. I was lucky to have a free hand in choosing what stories I wanted to work with, and Banu did not interfere with the organised chaotic way I went about it,' she said. 'I was very conscious of the fact that I knew very little about the community she places her stories in, so I only experienced art that was either set in or was about the milieu that she writes about. Thus, during the period I was working on the first draft, I found myself immersed in the very addictive world of Pakistani television dramas, music by people like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Ali Sethi, Arooj Aftab and others, and I even took classes to learn the Urdu script,' she added. Women and girls who challenged norms of society and patriarchy in quiet, rebellious ways formed a central theme in her work, often blended with humour and poignance. In Heart Lamp – a collection that was whittled down from a list of 50 stories written between 1990 and 2023, and also won the English PEN Translation Award – a grandmother craves soft drink to get over bereavement, a cleric is obsessed with Gobi Manchurian, and a wife's jealousy forces her husband to look for a groom for his widowed mother. 'The more intensely the incident affects me, the more deeply and emotionally I write,' Mushtaq said. 'I do not engage in extensive research; my heart itself is my field of study.'
Time of India
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Muslim author, Hindu translator: Duo ignites Kannada literary pride
The International Booker Prize win for Heart Lamp has triggered an outpouring of joy across Karnataka, with Kannadigas hailing it as a watershed moment for regional literature. The recognition comes at a time when Kannada literature , despite its rich legacy, has not seen a Jnanpith Award since Chandrashekhara Kambara win in 2010. Kannda once held the record for most Jnanpiths, but it has been overtaken by Hindi. The Booker win, therefore, is being celebrated as a long-awaited moment of global recognition. Mushtaq's literary journey is rooted in rebellion. In the early 1980s, she penned a powerful article rebuking a fatwa issued against a Muslim woman. The only publication bold enough to carry it was Lankesh Patrike, the tabloid run by literary icon P Lankesh. "This award has undoubtedly put the spotlight on Kannada," said Basavaraju Megalakeri, Mushtaq's colleague at Lankesh Patrike. "But one cannot overlook the symbolism; a Muslim woman author and a Hindu woman translator together bringing Kannada to the global stage. Whether intended or not, it is powerful." Renowned literary critic Prof Asha Devi MS, who wrote the foreword to Heart Lamp, said the award will resonate with women writers. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Tunisia: New Small Electric Car For Seniors. Prices Might Surprise You. Electric Cars | Search Ads Undo "Women writers have been congratulating one another ever since the news broke. It feels like a victory for every woman," Devi said. "The male-centric myth often claims women lack unity. That notion has been shattered by this collective celebration." Heart Lamp draws from decades of Mushtaq's writing, transcending religious and gender identities. "Sara Aboobacker gave us context for the struggle of Muslim women. Mushtaq took it beyond that. Her work speaks to universal human experiences, not just experiences of women or Muslim women," Devi added. In one of Mushtaq's most evocative stories, Omme Hennagu Prabhuve, the protagonist with God to become a woman for a day to understand the dangers women face. "This is not plea of just Muslim women, or women from one region or country," Devi said. "It's a plea rooted in shared human experience. The greatest impact of Banu Mushtaq is her ability to bring women characters out of boundaries set for them. She gives them dignity and a stamp of human experience." Though often associated with the Bandaya (rebel) school of literature, Devi argues that Mushtaq's style is more reflective than angry. "The essence of Bandaya is outrage (aakrosha), but when you're overwhelmed by outrage, truth can't be seen from all angles. Mushtaq's writing carries a tranquillity that enables a deeper, more nuanced engagement with truth."
