Baby Halder

Baby Halder (or Haldar) (born 1973) is an Indian author. Her best known work is her autobiography Aalo Aandhari (A Life Less Ordinary) (2002) which describes her harsh life growing up as a domestic worker, later translated into 21 languages, including 13 foreign languages. Born in Kashmir, Halder was abandoned by her birth mother at age 4 in Murshidabad, when her father's habitual drinking forced her mother to leave him. Subsequently, she was raised by an abusive father, an ex-serviceman and driver and her step-mother, with whom she travelled from Kashmir to Murshidabad and finally to Durgapur, West Bengal, where she grew up. She went to school intermittently, and dropped off after sixth standard, when at the age of 12, her father married her off to a man 14 years her senior, and a small-time decorator. She had her first child at the age of 13, and two more in a quick succession. Meanwhile, after her sister was strangled to death by her husband, she started working as domestic servant in the neighbourhood. Finally in 1999, at the age of 25, after years of domestic violence, she left her husband, escaping to Delhi on a train, with her three children on board. Now as a single parent, she started working as a housemaid in New Delhi homes, to support and educate her children, sons Subodh and Tapas and daughter, Piya; and then encountered several exploitative employers. Her last employer, writer and retired anthropology professor Prabodh Kumar and a grandson of noted Hindi literary giant Munshi Premchand, living in Gurgaon, a suburb of capital New Delhi, seeing her interest in books while dusting his book shelves, encouraged her to first read leading authors, starting with Taslima Nasreen's autobiographical Amar Meyebela (My Girlhood) about a tumultuous youth and deep anger on being born a woman in a poor society. This deeply moved Halder and turned out be a turning point, as it was to inspire her own memories, later on. She soon zealously began reading other authors. Subsequently, before going on a trip to South India, he bought her a notebook and pen and encouraged her to write her life story, which she did late at night after work and sometimes in between chores, using plain matter-of-fact language and writing in native Bengali. When Kumar was back after a month, she had already written 100 pages.