Heart Lamp: Selected Stories

“If one uses the word pati, there comes an urge to add devaru to it, a common practice, equating one’s husband with God. I am not willing to give Mujahid such elevated status.”

The first story in the collection establishes its preoccupation with the religious connotations of marriage in Indian culture. As a protagonist, Zeenat discusses her resistance to the idea that she should serve Mujahid as though he were a deity, signaling her liberal attitudes. The story will challenge this, however, by showing how she buys into the comforts that her marriage provides her and how it deeply impacts the life of her friend, Shaista.

“[M]y grandmother used to say that when a wife dies, it’s like an elbow injury for the husband. Do you know, Zeenat, if the elbow gets injured, the pain is extreme for one instant—it is intolerable. But it lasts only a few seconds, and after that one does not feel anything. There is no wound, no blood, no scar, no pain.”

The discussion of spousal death foreshadows Shaista’s fate at the end of the story, as well as Iftikhar’s reaction to it. This passage highlights The Problem of Gendered Violence in the Family by suggesting that men view even their wives as interchangeable and not particularly worthy in their own right—instead, they can easily move on after their wives’ deaths as if it were a short but minor inconvenience. This passage foreshadows how Iftikhar will quickly replace Shaista with a new wife after she dies.

“Asifa is not my daughter; she is like my mother. Not just now—ever since she left school, she has been managing all the household chores and looking after all the children.”

Shaista compares Asifa to her mother to underscore the cyclical nature of the problem of gendered violence in the family. The longer Asifa remains trapped in Iftikhar’s domestic expectations, the more likely she is to suffer Shaista’s fate and give birth to daughters who will experience the same cycle of repression and violence.