India, March 18 -- Banu Mushtaq has been writing for over three decades. When you decided to translate her work from Kannada into English, how did you zero in on the current set of stories in the collection Heart Lamp?

The stories that you get to read in Heart Lamp are from six different collections of Banu's short stories in Kannada. They span a period of 33 years, starting from 1990 and going up to 2023. Her first five short story collections have been put together as one consolidated volume called Haseena Matthu Ithara Kathegalu (2013) and there is another compilation titled Hennu Haddina Swayamvara (2023). After reading her short stories, I asked her if she had any particular favourites from her work that she wanted me to translate b...