Heart Lamp makes International Booker history

Written by: Aarthi Ramnath, Raghav Bikhchandani & Yash Budhwar

Heart Lamp makes International Booker history

The context: The International Booker honours works that are translated into English. All 13 authors on this year’s longlist are first-time nominees—from places like Palestine, Suriname and Rèunion. Indian lit made the cut with Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq’s ‘Heart Lamp’—translated by Deepa Bhasthi.

The big win: Mushtaq has been awarded the International Booker Prize. It’s the first time a short story collection has ever scored the top honour—also the first book written in Kannada to do so. Watch the winning moment below:

About the book: The collection of a dozen short stories focuses on the everyday lives of women in Muslim communities across southern India. They were originally published in Kannada between 1990 and 2023. Penguin released the book in India in April.

A Bandaya backstory: Banu Mushtaq has worked as a lawyer, journalist and activist since the 1970s. She began her writing career as part of a progressive literary movement in Karnataka known as ‘Bandaya’—which means ‘rebel’ or ‘rebellion’. It was a response to the dominance of the Hindi belt—and of Hindu upper castes. Mushtaq’s stories about Muslim women and girls is a lively correction to that exclusion:

Written in a style at once witty, vivid, colloquial, moving and excoriating, it’s in her characters — the sparky children, the audacious grandmothers, the buffoonish maulvis and thug brothers, the oft-hapless husbands, and the mothers above all, surviving their feelings at great cost — that Mushtaq emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of human nature.

Reminder: The last Indian to win the International Booker in 2022 was also a woman—Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand—translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell.

Mushtaq’s back story: A Hindu essay by GT Satish on Mushtaq begins with this wonderful story:

An eight-year-old Muslim girl is brought to a school run by Christian missionaries in Karnataka’s Shivamogga in the 1950s. The management is reluctant to admit her in the Kannada medium as they are worried she will not pick up the language and might be better off in an Urdu school. After much persuasion by her father, the girl is granted admission on the condition that she learn to read and write Kannada in six months or else leave the school. To her teachers’ surprise, not only does little Banu manage the feat, she does it in just a few days of joining school.

Interesting nugget to note: Mushtaq began her career as a reporter working with P Lankesh—the father of the legendary journalist Gauri Lankesh. She has also been a municipal councillor and lawyer.

A story of courage: When her anthology ‘Benki Male’ was published in 2000, Mushtaq faced severe backlash for saying women also had the right to offer prayers in mosques. A knife-wielding attacker attempted to take her life—much like what happened with Salman Rushdie. Though it received little media attention—as did her book even after being nominated for the International Booker, in stark contrast to the other shortlisted books.

Quote to note: This is what Mushtaq said of her moment of glory:

Mushtaq said that winning “feels like a thousand fireflies lighting up a single sky — brief, brilliant and utterly collective.” The book, she added, “is my love letter to the idea that no story is ‘local’” and to the idea that a story “born under a banyan tree in my village can cast shadows as far as this stage tonight.”

Reading list: The Guardian and New York Times offer an overview of her win. BBC News offers an excellent profile of Mushtaq. The Hindu has a lovely interview with her—but it is paywalled. We carried an excerpt from Heart Lamp in our weekend Advisory.

War on Gaza: The latest update

Where we are now: Two weeks after his security cabinet approved plans to take over large parts of Gaza, Netanyahu now says Israel will “take control” of the entire strip. The IDF has been relentlessly bombing Gaza ever since—yesterday’s air strikes killed 38 people in a 30-minute period.

Gazans are dying: It’s as simple as that. Tel Aviv has also blocked all humanitarian aid—using the pretext of driving out Hamas. Two million residents are on the brink of famine. The UN has now warned that 14,000 babies will die in the next 48 hours—if they do not receive aid. Btw, BBC News valiantly did its job repeatedly “pressing” UN officials on the numbers—just in case they were exaggerating. Because factchecking the number of dead babies is surely the most urgent task.

The great Israeli fake out: In the midst of immense suffering, Israel is playing with Gazans much as an orca with its prey. Tel Aviv claimed to have lifted the blockade on Sunday—giving false hope of rescue. It even claimed to have allowed 93 trucks into Gaza. But none of it proved to be true:

Only five trucks of aid had reached Gaza by Tuesday afternoon and aid workers had not been given permission to distribute even that token shipment, Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office (Ocha) told a Geneva press briefing. Israeli authorities have approved “around 100” other trucks to enter Gaza but not yet let them cross, he said. Even that shipment would do little to reduce widespread hunger after 11 weeks of near total siege; it is just a fifth of what reached Gaza daily before the war, when people were well-fed.

Western allies say ‘enough’: Not Amreeka, of course. But the UK, France and Canada seem to have lost the stomach for maintaining ‘neutrality’ in the face of carnage:

Britain, France and Canada called the expanded Israeli campaign against Hamas in Gaza and the withholding of aid “egregious actions” that cannot continue. “If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response,” the statement said.

Israeli politicians say ‘enough’: More notable is the growing criticism inside Israel—where even so-called liberals have shown little compassion since the October 7 attacks. Leader of the opposition Yair Golan—who served as deputy chief of staff for Israel’s military said: “A sane country doesn’t engage in fighting against civilians, doesn’t kill babies as a hobby and doesn’t set the expulsion of a population as a goal.” We suspect Tel Aviv has not been sane for a very long time.

Reading list: The Guardian has more on the blocked aid—and rising opposition inside Israel. Al Jazeera and New York Times report on rising resistance from Western allies.

Coming soon: Big AI changes to Google search

Google Search page and bar now include an ‘AI Mode’ button. The new feature—rolling out first in the US—will answer search queries in “a chatbot-style conversation without the standard list of blue links.” What this means:

You may no longer search "best Father's Day gifts." You might instead go to a chatbot and say, "I'm looking for a Father's Day gift. My dad likes Roman history, puzzles and wood crafts." You'll then get a more detailed response, and a conversation, rather than just a set of links that have similar words in them.

AI search for everything: The AI Mode will transform everything you search for on the web. It will help you buy products—much like a personal shopper. Or it can help you geek out on finance or sports news with “graphs based on complex data sets.”

Coming next: This is only the first of a full-on AI experience that will offer a variety of new tools—all powered by Google’s LLM Gemini:

Features expected to launch this summer will integrate AI Mode with your other Google apps, meaning the AI model will be able to get context around your searches from information in your email or calendar. If you ask for a restaurant in a city you're visiting, for example, it might suggest places that are near your reservations.

If you’re worried about privacy, you can disconnect the AI Mode from your personal apps. CNET has the best reporting on Google’s AI Mode—while The Guardian and Wall Street Journal offer a broad biz overview.

Meanwhile, over at Microsoft: The company is also looking at AI search—but as an integration for businesses. Imagine if any website you visited—whether it’s your favourite recipe blog or a hiking gear store—had its own smart, ChatGPT-style assistant.

Microsoft is developing something called NLWeb—a simple, open protocol that lets any website add such a ChatGPT-style assistant with just a few lines of code. All you need to do is feed it your website’s content—and plug it into a cheap AI model (like GPT-4o Mini), and you're good to go. Here’s why it’s revolutionary:

The point here is not that these searches are possible, it’s that almost any developer or website owner can deploy them. They don’t have to rely on some external AI product to answer people’s questions, and just hope and pray the bot sends the link to them. They can run the bot themselves.

The Verge has the best reporting, but it’s paywalled. Reuters has a related story on Microsoft’s plans to help AI agents communicate and work with each other.

Sticking with AI: A new study shows that AI—specifically ChatGPT-4—can be just as persuasive as a human in any debate. Given access to basic personal info—like your age, gender or political leaning—it will do way better than most humans at changing your mind. The reason: AI is better at tailoring its arguments to match the person it is debating:

“It’s like debating someone who doesn’t just make good points: they make your kind of good points by knowing exactly how to push your buttons,” said [Franceso Salvi, first author of the research], noting the strength of the effect could be even greater if more detailed personal information was available — such as that inferred from someone’s social media activity.

Interesting point to note: Even though most participants could tell when they were debating a bot, it didn’t make them any less likely to be persuaded. That’s a pretty big deal—especially when you think about how this would play out during elections or a pandemic. The Guardian offers an overview but you can read the entire study here.

Say hello to Posha's kitchen robot

The Indian startup has created a machine that can cook your food. Okay, it’s not C-3PO in an apron but the concept is pretty cool:

It’s like a coffee machine for food. So when you want to drink a cup of coffee, you choose a brew of coffee on your coffee machine. You put beans, sugar, and milk in different containers. You tap brew, and out comes a cup of coffee. Posha does something similar, but for food.

How it works: The machine is an induction stovetop with its own pan and three kinds of spatulas. It is programmed with 500 recipes for one-pot cooking. This is all you need to do: “You can search and/or choose a recipe on the Posha screen, put in freshly chopped and other ingredients in the ingredient containers, tap cook and out comes a delicious meal.”

To state the obvious: The machine is built for busy professionals who don’t want to slave over a hot stove. That said, none of the reports mention how the final results taste. If you need more, here’s an Insta tutorial. You can check out a dal makhani routine below—narrated by a paavam young man who doesn’t have mummy to cook for him anymore. (Mint)

what caught our eye

business & tech

Genetic testing company 23andMe—which declared bankruptcy in March—has been purchased by American biotechnology company Regeneron Pharmaceuticals for a cool $256 million. Gizmodo has more.
Airtel and Google have teamed up to counter Jio’s free cloud blitz with 100GB Google One cloud storage.
The Indian government has paved the way for a licence-free use of a portion of the 6GHz spectrum—in a boost to WiFi speeds and next-gen gadgets.
A Microsoft employee disrupted CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote speech at the company’s Build developer conference, with a pro-Palestine protest.
CATL—which supplies batteries to Tesla EVs—has stormed onto the market with a $4.6 billion IPO, defying geopolitical headwinds.

sports & entertainment

Netflix is bringing ‘Sesame Street’ to OTT—it will stream the next three seasons of the iconic children’s show and will also feature a library of past episodes.
Conan O’Brien joins the cast of ‘Toy Story 5’. He will voice the character named Smarty Pants.
BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia dismisses the rumours of India pulling out of Asia Cup as 'speculative and imaginary'.
It’s official—the IPL final will no longer take place at the Eden Gardens. The BCCI has shifted the big match to… the Narendra Modi stadium ofcourse.

health & environment

In 2007, a group of scientists at NASA discovered 26 previously unknown bacterial species in the cleanroom where the Phoenix spacecraft was assembled. The discovery was recently published and highlights the possible risk of these microorganisms contaminating space missions or the planets they visit.
Rats bit a patient at a government hospital in Bihar, sparking public outrage and a political backlash in the state.
A new study by Delhi-based think tank Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) reveals that nearly 57% of India’s districts—home to about 76% of the country's population—are at “high to very high” risk from extreme heat. The Hindu has more on the study.
A new study warns that even if we manage to limit global warming to 1.5°C—sea levels could still rise by about 1 cm per year by the end of the century—leading to ‘catastrophic inland migration’.

meanwhile, in the world

There seems to be a marked decline in the use of semicolons in English books, according to a new study.
Pope Leo XIV met Veep JD Vance at the Vatican—ahead of a US-led push for a ceasefire in Ukraine.
In its latest crackdown on dissent and activism, Russia has outlawed Amnesty International as an “undesirable organisation”

meanwhile, in India

YouTuber Dhruv Rathee has taken down his AI-generated video on Sikh history from the platform after backlash from prominent Sikh groups, who called it an “insult to the spirit of Sikhism.”
The monsoon is set to hit Kerala in the next 4–5 days, says IMD—marking its earliest arrival since 2009.
In his first big public pitch since the Feb 5 polls, Kejriwal launched the Association of Students for Alternative Politics (ASAP)—a rebranded AAP student wing.
In a not-so-surprising and ironic turn of events, over 200 academics—including a roster of government VCs—have blasted Ashoka’s Ali Khan Mahmudabad for his Operation Sindoor comments, accusing him of endangering communal harmony and gender equity.

Five things to see

One: We almost never recommend watching Indian TV news. India Today’s anchor Preeti Choudhry deserves to be an exception. Watch her grill Renu Bhatia—chairperson of the Haryana State Women Commission—who filed the FIR against Ashoka University professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad (explained here). It’s a very long eight minutes for Bhatia. Watch it below.

Two: Indian model-actress Ruchi Gujjar turned up at Cannes in a golden lehenga and, umm, this necklace. What can we say? Some people truly wear Modi-ji on their heart. (The Telegraph)

Making a tamer appearance at Cannes: Sharmila Tagore, Simi Garewal and Wes Anderson at the screening of a restored 4K version of Satyajit Ray’s ‘Aranyer Din Ratri’. (The Hindu)

Three: Everyone at Cannes thinks this is Pedro Pascal.

But we know this is the real Pedro Pascal lol! (FYI: This video is from his last day on the set of ‘The Last of Us’.)

Four: Ahead of the premiere of ‘Highest 2 Lowest’—which marks Spike Lee and Denzel Washington’s fifth collab—Cannes Festival chief Thierry Frémaux surprised Washington with a Palme d’Or honour. Watch his emotional speech below. (Deadline)

Five: Spotted! Tom Hiddleston and Willem Dafoe in Nepal—where they are filming 'Tenzing'—an upcoming biopic on the life of Everest pioneer Tenzing Norgay. Mercifully, neither white men have been cast for the title role. Hiddleston is Edmund Hillary—while Dafoe plays Colonel John Hunt who led the historic expedition.