India, May 9 -- Writer, activist and lawyer Banu Mushtaq's short story collection Heart Lamp, masterfully translated by Deepa Bhasthi from Kannada into English, brings together 12 stories set in Muslim households in south India - a world familiar to Mushtaq, who has spent most of her life in Hassan in Karnataka.

The opening story, Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal, leaves no doubt as to why Mushtaq's fiction has annoyed some within her own community, especially clerics. As a self-identified feminist, she speaks loud and clear against patriarchy. Her narrator, Zeenat, says, ".for us Muslims, it is said that, other than Allah above, our pati is our God on earth." Zeenat baulks at the idea. She is not keen to give her husband Mujahid "such elev...