International Booker Prize 2025: ‘I call myself a writer-translator with a hyphen in between’, says Deepa Bhasthi

It is market day in Madikeri, Kodagu, and Deepa Bhasthi, back home from London after her International Booker Prize win for the translation of Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp, is immersed in the routine of the everyday as the interview takes off. Pots and pans clink in the background, the sound of birdsong wafts in from time to time. Even though she is on the other side of a telephone line, the cadences are as familiar as if she’s sitting across from me. It is this familiarity of language and rhythm, routine and purpose, that she speaks of in her foreword to the collection, a fine essay titled, ‘Against Italics’, in which she explains her process of translation, both for the collection, and in general, and the multilingualism that is the Subcontinental inheritance. “Here, speech is as much a physical, almost musical performance, where a word’s meaning depends on haava-bhaava – gestures and expressions – on tone, etc, as much as it does on the information it expresses,” she writes. In this interview, Bhasthi, 41, speaks of the cultural elasticity that allows her to flit between languages, and why it is fine for people to not like Heart Lamp. Excerpts:

I was recently reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Translating Myself and Others in which she speaks of how the act of translation has transformed the way she writes, and how like reading — only more intense in the way that it gets under the skin — it pushes her to greater attention. What has your experience of translation been like?

To be honest, I don’t see the practice of translation and that of writing as two different things. In one, you’re translating somebody else’s thoughts, but when you’re writing, you’re translating your own thoughts into words, phrases and sentences. A writer and translator are both translators. In that sense. I am a writer first and foremost, I call myself a writer-translator with a hyphen in between when it comes to my translation work. But I agree with Jhumpa Lahiri that it makes you a lot more sensitive to words, to its musicality, to the way language works.

Do you cultivate separate literary voices in the many languages that you speak?

That’s a very interesting question. I’m not sure because I write primarily in English, but I do believe that everything we read and write, watch and listen to influences what we end up writing. I would say there is a hum of many languages in the English that I write in. So yes, certainly languages speak to each other in my head. I’m sure somewhere it comes through in the writing as well.

You prepared for Heart Lamp by taking Urdu classes, watching old Pakistani serials. How easy — and you speak several languages, I know — is it for you to slip in and out of languages? Do you need to step away when you’re done with a work or is this multi-linguality built into your rhythm?

Multilinguality is actually far more common than we think of. At least, I can speak for it in the case of South India. I might be speaking in English, but there will be phrases or words from Kannada which will slip in. For example, aaiyo or aiaiyo is something we use pretty much every single day. In that sense, it’s instinctive. The thing about language is that whatever is easy and immediately remembered is what we reach for. It is far more common and therefore far easier for us to inhabit many languages.

A translated work is one of joint ownership. When Banu Mushtaq was speaking about her first meeting with you, she said how she had sought out translators before but things had not fallen in place. But with you, she said, there was an instinctive trust. How crucial is this element of trust between a writer and a translator?

At least for me — I don’t know if it works differently for other translators — there has to be an immense degree of trust between the writer and the translator. I don’t think I would be comfortable with writers who are hovering over me to say, no, use this word instead of that. I’m told some writers can be like that. But that’s for their translators to navigate. I loved that degree of trust that Banu and I shared. She was comfortable with what I was doing and left me to my own devices. But she was always there whenever I wanted to check on something, run things by her or get some clarification. It was a very hands-off kind of translation, something I deeply appreciated.

Also Read | Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp wins International Booker Prize 2025

Is there a difference in how you translate a work by a woman to one by a man?

Absolutely. I think there is a female language and as a female translator, you immediately make equal connections. I truly believe that there are nuances, secrets and mysteries that a women’s language has which is not accessible to men and rightly so.

Since the time the International Booker was announced, there has also been a lot of discussion on the merits of the book, whether it deserved the award. As someone who put it together, how do you react to this criticism?

No book will ever be loved by everyone. Whether it is a winning book or not, there will be people who will fawn over a work and appreciate it or say that it is without any virtue. So I would never expect everyone to love Heart Lamp. I think it is fine for people to come to a book with very different experiences and very different expectations.

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Did you ever feel plagued by the question of appropriation, of speaking for a minority experience at a time of churn not just in India but across the world?

This was one of my first concerns when I decided to translate these stories, because I thought it would be the first criticism that would be levied — that I am not from the community, so how dare I translate or bring these stories to a different set of readers. But I make my reasons clear in the foreword. I mean I was born a Hindu, but I call myself a lapsed Hindu. I also think it’s important to note that yes, Banu’s characters have Muslim names and they are set in a certain community, but they are universal in their theme. These experiences of oppression and of living under the pressure of patriarchy are certainly not restricted to the Muslim community alone. Every single religion, caste, creed, class, is burdened by them. This was important for me to note to give myself permission to say that I am not taking a minority experience and shaping it into something else — these are experiences I have been part of. Women I know go through such experiences, in different ways maybe, but in very much related ways. These are women we have heard of, met or know — an aunt, a friend, a cousin.There is a sisterhood in this as well.

Also Read | International Booker Prize 2025: How Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp insists on dignity, witness and repair

As in our public life, do you get a sense of a demand for homogeneity in literature coming out of this time as well?

Not really. Because stories like the ones that Banu has written and continues to write have always been there, whether you want to call it protest literature or the literature of the minority or Dalit literature. These are also stories that belong to us, belong to the world, whether we acknowledge them or not. Maybe it is just the same problem everywhere — minority voices are not as loudly heard as voices from the mainstream. These stories have always been there, but mainstream narratives might just encourage you to think that this is an aberration.

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