Baby Halder is a best-selling author and has done book-tours to cities such as Paris, Frankfurt and Hong Kong. Her book has been translated into 12 foreign languages including French, German and Japanese. She is also a regular at literary festivals across the country.

The 40-year-old has been working as a maid at the house of Prabodh Kumar in Gurgaon, whom she considers her literary mentor.

Prabodh once told Hindustan Times, “When she started working at my house, she had enormous interest in books. She would pick Bengali books from the bookshelf and avidly read them. As I interacted with her, I realised that she had a story that needed to be told.”

Baby was married off at the tender age of 13 and was raped on her wedding night. Soon after that, she left her home at Durgapur in West Bengal for Delhi where she started working as a house-maid.

Baby said, “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.”

Today, she is the author of two best-selling books. First was ‘Aalo Aandhari’ (Light and Darkness) that was published in 2002 in Hindi. In 2006, it was published in English titled ‘A Life Less Ordinary: A Memoir.’ In 2010, she published her second book ‘Eshast Rupantar’.

But why is that she still wants to continue her work as a domestic-help? She told the newspaper, “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. But eventually I hope to move to Kolkata someday, which I think is the best place for people who want to write in Bengali.”

Amen.

Do you have a similar story to share about your maid? Write to us at contactjaipurwomenblog@gmail.com.