Accidental Blogger

I came across this story about three weeks ago in a South Asian tabloid, Voice of Asia,  published in Texas. (I read this paper whenever I visit the local south Indian eatery where it is available to the patrons.)  It was a remarkable enough tale and eminently blogworthy. But I didn’t write about it  then because I wasn’t sure if I could find a web link to it. Being familiar with the rigors and drudgery of the life of an average domestic servant in India, I recognized that this particular life story  is noteworthy not just for the determination of the protagonist but also due to the generosity and kindness of her  employer.  Today, I found the story of Baby Halder, the maid servant in New Delhi who has become a best selling author, in the New York Times. 

Haldar’s first book "Light and Darkness"

NEW DELHI, Aug. 1 — Abandoned by her mother at 4, married off at 12 to an abusive husband, a mother herself at 13 — there is little in Baby Halder’s traumatic childhood to suggest that she would become an emerging star on India’s literary horizon.

A single parent at 25, struggling to feed her three children by working as a maid for a series of exploitative employers, Ms. Halder had no time to devote to reading or to contemplating the harsh reality of her existence until she started work in the home of a sympathetic retired academic, who caught her browsing through his books when she was meant to be dusting the shelves. He discovered a latent interest in literature, gave her a notebook and pen, and encouraged her to start writing.

“A Life Less Ordinary,” this season’s publishing sensation in India, is the result of her nighttime writing sessions, squeezed in after her housework duties were finished, when she poured raw memories of her early life into the lined exercise books.

Prabodh Kumar, the retired anthropology professor who discovered her, was impressed with what he read and encouraged her to continue. After several months, he sat down with her and helped edit her text into book form. Written in Bengali and translated into several other Indian languages and English this year, Ms. Halder’s autobiography has become a best seller.

In a sense, this is an Indian “Angela’s Ashes”: Ms. Halder echoes Frank McCourt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning account of his miserable boyhood in Ireland with her story of a bleak upbringing in northeastern India in the 1970’s. Ms. Halder’s style will never win her literary prizes; even with Mr. Kumar’s editing, the narrative is rough, and the horde of characters who flit in and out can be confusing. Nevertheless, her book provides a moving depiction of life for millions of impoverished Indian women, and of aspects of Indian society not usually the focus of novelists’ attention….

Despite her book’s success, Ms. Halder says she has no plans to change careers. She is writing her second book, continuing the narrative of her life, in between domestic chores.

“I want to be a writer and I will continue to write,” she said. But for now, she said, she cannot abandon Mr. Kumar, “so I will go on working here.”

And then she left, to prepare lunch for her boss."