Stories as quiet rebellion: Banu Mushtaq in conversation with Pankaja Srinivasan

That unspoken truths lay at the heart of ‘Heart Lamp: The Stories Behind the Stories’, a compelling session at The Hindu Lit for Life 2026, where writer and activist Banu Mushtaq was in conversation with journalist Pankaja Srinivasan. The discussion traced the lived histories, Kannada political movements, and intimate encounters that shaped Heart Lamp, Banu’s internationally recognised book that was awarded the Booker Prize 2025.

Opening the conversation, Pankaja located Heart Lamp within a larger moral and political landscape – where everyday injustice forms the texture of ordinary lives. Banu responded by returning to the Bandaya Sahitya Movement of the 1970s in Karnataka, a period of intense social churn that profoundly influenced her worldview.

Bandaya movement, she explained, emerged from widespread unrest among youth who questioned caste hierarchy, patriarchy, class oppression and linguistic dominance. Alongside the Dalit movements, farmers’ collectives, and the feminist movement, Banaya Sahitya sought to challenge the literary and social status quo that showcased how literature cannot remain detached from lived experiences. “Though the scale has changed, the spirit of resistance remains active even today,” said Banu.

Banu then spoke about her personal journey into activism and writing. Giving up teaching after marriage and confined within the domestic expectations, she described the suffocation that pushed her towards public life. Later, she turned that into journalism, advocacy and eventually fiction.

Pankaja drew attention to the emotional universality of Banu’s stories – how women from certain socio-economic and religious contexts speak a universal language that goes far beyond the boundaries of Karnataka. Banu agrees, explaining that her stories are not direct reproductions of real life, but grow organically from fragments. “A single sentence, a gesture, a facial expression,” said Banu. “It is how one cooks, or how one sings,” she said, describing writing as an instinctive process rather than a planned one.

Only when characters, dialogue, and structure are complete does she “record” the story, almost as if witnessing a film unfold in her mind.

The session closed with a brief glimpse into her forthcoming book– a work, she hinted, rich with drama, resistance, and survival. Finally, with Heart Lamp, it reminds readers that shared stories are not merely narratives; they are acts of witnessing a quiet rebellion.

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