Book Review
A Life Less Ordinary, by Baby Halder
Published by Harper Perennial
This book and the story of its author is quintessentially Indian, India being a land of startling contradictions that sometimes baffles and again pleasantly surprises the rest of the world. Home to fully half of the world’s poorest people while having some of the richest people on earth, a country where women are traditionally subordinated while still producing strong women national leaders, India constantly comes up with the unexpected. This book, the first of two others by its author, Baby Halder, took the Indian literary world by storm and gained international recognition, partly because the author was a poor woman with no formal education, coming from the wretched society of the poor of India. Suffering abuse, first by her father, and then physical violence at the hands of a brutal husband, ill-treated as a housemaid to wealthy families, she is finally taken in by a kind-hearted elderly retired academic who sees her potential talent and transforms her to become an acclaimed writer. Such miracles can happen in India, a land that also produces many saints, philosophers and social activists.
Baby Halder does not even have a proper first name. As the author says it, no one bothered about a name for her and she was always called Baby. Her family came from Kashmir to a West Bengal village not far from Durgapur. It is a dysfunctional family. In her early childhood the father leaves the family for work elsewhere for long periods and often fails to send money to support them. Her mother then walks away with her youngest child and is not heard of again till many years later. Her father takes one woman and then another as his wife. Though she is keen to study in the local school, she is taken out after a few years to do housework. To be rid of her, her father marries her off at age twelve to a man of twenty six who makes her a household slave and denies her love and basic comforts and beats her often. They have three children, while a fourth was miscarried after she was severely battered by her husband.
What makes the book interesting is the array of characters that come to life in the story. As in most Asian societies, Baby’s family has a large network of relatives. To find solace from her misery, she often manages to go and live for short periods with different family members who then become part of the broader background story. This gives her the reason to describe their characters, occupations and living conditions. What is interesting is that despite the poverty, suffering and cruelty, there is also plenty of kindness and generosity by others, sometimes even by complete strangers who are not much better off.
Finally, she leaves her husband and the village and travels to Delhi with her three children to work as a domestic servant to wealthy families. Her suffering continues as domestic service in affluent homes in India is usually a form of semi-slavery. By fortuitous circumstances she eventually becomes a maid in the house of an elderly retired professor of anthropology, Prabodh Kumar, who becomes her mentor. The kindly man recognizes her talents and encourages her to read and then write her own life stories. Through him and his circle of intellectual friends, the literary world in India then discovers her.
If the book was merely a collection of anecdotes about her life and its hardships, it would be an ordinary story. The language is simple and has the tone of a humble person relating a matter of fact story to another, face to face. Despite ill-treatment, the author harbours no ill-will towards those who mistreated her. What makes it exceptional is the portrayal of an indomitable woman who refuses to be ill-treated and marginalized within a society where women are handicapped and tied to abusive partners and her ability to climb out of this through sheer determination and love of her children. In keeping with her humanity, she continues to help her elderly benefactor as a housemaid even after she becomes an affluent writer with a house of her own.
This book was written in Bengali and translated into Hindi by Prof. Prabodh Kumar and was first published by a small publisher in Calcutta, Roshani Publishers, that catered to fostering women authors, under the title of Aalo Aandhari (Light and Darkness). It became a best-seller in India and was translated into several other Indian languages. In 2006 it was published in English under the title, A Life Less Ordinary, and that made her internationally famous. Her books have been translated to twelve languages, including English and German.
Kenneth Abeywickrama
23 January 2014.