A Life Less Ordinary - Softcover

Baby Halder

3.59

534 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9381017913 ISBN 13: 9789381017913

Publisher: Zubaan, 2013

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This story of extraordinary courage and survival is now available in a brand new paperback edition as part of the Zubaan Classics series to celebrate Zubaan's 10th anniversary. This is the story of Baby Halder, a young woman working as a domestic in a home in Delhi. Hurriedly married off at the age of twelve, a mother by the time she was fourteen, Baby writes movingly and evocatively of her life as a young girl, and later as a young woman. The long absences of her father, the hardships faced by her mother, and her decision to walk out of her marriage, leaving Baby and her sister to manage the household, were the realities that shaped Baby s early life. When marriage came, Baby, still a child, yearned to play and study, but was burdened with the responsibility of being wife and mother while facing considerable violence from her husband. Escape finally came many years later, by which time the still young Baby was a mother of three, and she fled to the city in the hope of finding a job. Working in Delhi as a domestic help, Baby was lucky enough to come across an employer who encouraged her to read which she did voraciously and then to write. The story of Baby s life is a lesson in courage and survival. Since it was first published in Hindi, this book has become a bestseller, receiving accolades from some of the best-known writers and critics in India and elsewhere. It has also been translated into other Indian languages. Baby Halder is a writer and a domestic worker who lives and works in a home near Delhi. She is now working on her second book. Urvashi Butalia is a publisher and writer whose work includes the award-winning oral history of Partition, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India.

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About the Author:

Baby Halder continues to work as a maid for the employer who helped her discover her literary talent. She is writing a second book that continues the narrative of her life, and she lives with her children on the outskirts of Delhi, India.

From Booklist:

A best-seller in India, this stirring autobiography, translated from Bengali and Hindi, is about poverty and brutal child labor, not in factories but at home. When Halder's mother leaves, the child struggles to stay in school, but her father marries her off at 12 to a man more than twice her age, and she bears him three children. Her husband beats her, stones her, and abuses his children. No one helps until finally she dares to leave him and works in backbreaking jobs as a live-in domestic, determined to educate her kids. True to the brave young girl's viewpoint, the plain, first-person narrative is sometimes just too repetitive. But there are unforgettable scenes, as when the pregnant 13-year-old yearns to join her classmates at play and in the classroom. The astonishing Cinderella ending is rooted in gritty realism: Halder's new boss, like the kind father she never had, sees her reading his books as she dusts them and encourages her to write her own story—this story. Rochman, Hazel
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