INHERITANCE OF GRIEF: FEMINIST POSTMEMORY AND DENIAL OF MOURNING IN BANU MUSHTAQ’S “STONE SLABS FOR SHAISTA MAHAL”

Abstract

South Asian trauma fiction has traditionally concentrated on public catastrophes and historical tragedies, often overlooking the nuanced, gendered experience of grief within familiar spaces. This paper explores the reclaiming of marginalised voices and cultural memory in the poignant short story “Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal” by Banu Mushtaq. It traces the cyclical, re-presenting nature of traumatic memory within storytelling – a recursive process in trauma narratives. By discussing Butler’s concept of “grievable lives”, the paper reveals how the life and death of the central character, Shaista, a Muslim wife and mother, are rendered ungrievable. Her existence is devalued, and her loss is excluded from actual mourning due to dominant patriarchal structures that deny her recognition as worthy of grief. Additionally, Hirsch’s concept of postmemory helps to explain how the narrative voice, embodied by the character Zeenat, bears the burden of Shaista’s trauma through indirect transmission and witnessing. When the text is read with this critical framework, “Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal” unveils domestic trauma not as an episodic rupture but as an everyday, ongoing condition. Mushtaq’s work, therefore, also expands the scope of feminist trauma studies by emphasising mourning, which, when denied institutionally and socially, remains as embodied labour — remembered through corporeal memory and silently repeated across generations.