A bestselling author who was a domestic Help!

“Nature creates ability, luck provides it with opportunity”

– Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Professor Prabodh Kumar, the grandson of the legendary Hindi writer Munshi Prem Chand, is a retired Professor of Anthropology. He got a new maid through his milkman. She was a Bengali lady, a mother of three, who worked hard silently doing cooking, mopping, and sweeping. She displayed an abnormal behaviour. While dusting the bookshelf, she tried to read some Bengali books.

This surprised Prabodh Kumar and he asked her “Can you read?”, actually she could not only read, but finally became a bestselling author. She went on book tours to Frankfurt, Hong Kong and Paris. Her books are translated into 12 languages including French, German and Japanese.

The name of this incredible maid is Baby Halder. She was born, brought up in Murshidabad, West Bengal. She lost her mother as a child and was troubled by an abusive father. She was a school dropout and was married at the tender age of 13 years to a man twice her age. Within a short span of five years, she had three children.

Unfortunately, her husband attacked her with a stone for speaking to another man. With remarkable determination, she walked out and took a train to Delhi with her children, where she started work as a household cleaner. Her employers were largely abusive, one forcing her to lock her children in the attic, another demanding never-ending chores and massages.

When the kind professor offered her the use of his bookshelves, she hesitantly chose Taslima Nasreen’s Amar Meyebela (My Girlhood). “It was as if,” recalls Baby, “I was reading about my own life.” Other books left Prabodh’s shelf in rapid succession: novels by Ashapurna Devi, Mahashweta Devi, Buddhadeb Guha. That was when Prabodh went out one day and bought her a pen and notebook. “Write,” he told her, an order that made Baby almost weep with frustration. “I was nervous when I held the pen in my fingers. I had not written anything since my school days. But when I started writing, words began to flow effortlessly. In fact, writing turned out to be a cathartic experience,” revealed Halder, who has studied up to seventh grade. “What she wrote had enormous depth. In fact, I showed it to my friends and they agreed with me,” said Kumar, who has translated Halder’s books into Hindi. In fact, her first book ‘Aalo Aandhari’ (Light and Darkness) was published in 2002 in Hindi. In 2006, it was published in English, titled ‘A Life Less Ordinary: A Memoir.’

Recalling her experiences of writing she said, “It was nearly 20 years since I had ever written in a notebook,” But her first words worked their own magic: they unlocked her past. All her searing, suppressed memories of the mother who abandoned them, the night when the man she married climbed into her bed and raped her, the sister who was strangled by her husband, the terror and pain of delivering her first child at 13, memories she had never confided to anyone, didn’t even realise she had, flowed out into the notebook.

Mr. Kumar explained that at first her spelling and handwriting were poor, but that she swiftly improved and gradually gained greater sophistication as a writer. He was excited but did not trust his own judgment. He consulted friends Ashok Seksariya and Ramesh Goswami with whom he shared a common interest in literature. Both were enthused by Baby’s manuscript, hailing it as another Diary of Anne Frank. Prabodh was persuaded to translate it into Hindi. Aalo Aandhari (Light and Darkness) was ready. But finding a publisher for such an unusual narrative was tougher; the book was too strange for their tastes. But Sanjay Bharti, who owns a small publishing house, Roshani Publishers, agreed to risk it even if it lost him money.

There was, however, yet another surprise in store for all the four friends of literature: Aalo Aandhari began selling from the first day of its launch. It sold so well that the second edition was out in less than two months. Noted directors like Prakash Jha have shown interest in making a film on it, someone wants to make a play out of it, others want to translate it into English, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu and a new literary magazine in Kolkata, 'Bhasha Bandhan', will start serialising the book in Bengali.

“Truly this is a story of courage under fire. It also illustrates how Indian society treats women who leave their husbands, stigmatizing them and pushing them to the margins of existence.” But for Baby, the best thing about her rebirth as an author is the regard of her new friends. “For the first time in my life, I feel confident that my story is worth telling, and in my own words.”

She is often invited to speak at literary festivals across the country. Halder has rubbed shoulders with many top writers at literary festivals and seminar across the world. She is a fan of Arundhati Roy, Taslima Nasrin and Jhumpa Lahiri. Halder has built a house in Kolkata with earnings from her books. “I need not work as a domestic help anymore, but I am not comfortable leaving my employer who is a father-like figure to me. Her two children, Tapas, 20, and Piya 17 – are aspiring to become fashion designers.