A Life Less Ordinary

by Baby Halder

  For a while we chatted about this and that—all sorts of things—and then I asked Baba how everyone was in Kolkata. How was my brother, and how was Ma? Baba said, “Ma? Your ma? Do you mean you haven’t heard?” He looked at me for a long moment. Perhaps he was wondering how to tell me, and worrying that I would not be able to take it. Should I tell her, he must have wondered, can she take the truth? Should I tell her that her mother is dead? I thought I saw these thoughts passing through his mind. I cried, “Baba!” and he started. I was sure by now that my mother was dead. “What happened? Is Ma all right?”

  “Your Ma?” he said, “Your Ma has been dead these six or seven years. Did your brother not tell you?”

  “No, no one told me,” I said, sobbing. And even if they had, I thought, what could I have done? I’d heard once that she was in the hospital—she must have died that time because there was no news of her after that. I thought, Everyone knows everything except me. My brother, his children and family…they all live so close by but no one thinks I need to be told anything. I’d visited their home so often, but no one had so much as mentioned that Ma was ill or that she had passed away. And all this time I had been planning to visit her. I had heard that when she was ill in hospital, my younger brother had gone to Baba and asked him to visit her in hospital, but Baba did not go. And why should he? He didn’t need Ma for anything. I thought he must have known that she would not survive but he did not go. He could have done this as a last gesture for her, but he did not. My younger brother had to do her last rites on his own; even my older brother and his family apparently got to know much later. And I heard only now.

  Baba asked me where my elder son was. I told him he was working nearby and Baba asked if we could go and see him. So we went. My son was so happy to see him, he cried out, “Arre, Dadu!” and touched his feet. Then he immediately asked, “How is my Baba?”

  “He is all right. I asked him to come with me but he didn’t.” Baba looked at my son and his eyes filled with tears. “How you people have grown up,” he said, “and you’re doing well. I am so happy for you.” Then he turned and said to me, “Now you will not have any problem, child, your son has grown up and he will look after you. Just wait and see: one day your troubles will be over and your son will be there standing by you.” Then he blessed my boy. “Stay well, son,” he said and came back with me. As he prepared to leave our home, Tatush came out and said to Baba, “Don’t worry about your daughter, she will be all right.”

  “Now that she is with you, I have no worries at all. I know she will be all right.” Then he left. He had heard from someone that I was now writing, and he was very happy to hear this. Unlike earlier times when he did not even bother with me, now he was anxious to know about my writing and would often call to ask. He always asked if I wanted to come back and immediately added that if I did not want to stay I could come right back. But I had no desire to go.

  STILL, I WAS VERY SAD AFTER BABA WENT. I WISHED I HAD seen my mother before she died. I worried about Baba’s health. Jethu and Sharmila had written me many letters to which I had not responded, and these sat on my head like another worry. Finally, one day, I decided that I must at least write back to them and perhaps that would make me feel better, so I collected all the letters and sat myself down. Then I thought of reading them again once before writing back. I began with Jethu’s letters and started reading them as I would a story. In one of them he said, “Tatush had told you to consult a dictionary, and he is right, you must do so. That way, you will make fewer mistakes and will find it easier to write letters. It does not matter if you do make mistakes. Don’t let that put you off. You will learn from these to write well. It is no bad thing to keep trying. Don’t let your story get lost in sleep like your Tatush does! In the new year, I want you to write a lot more and to be well and healthy. I like your writing very much and I believe that others will like it too. I am sending you this essay at the suggestion of my friend, Anand. You cannot imagine how much pleasure your writing has given your Jethu and your Tatush and how much it has made us think. The best thing is that now you do not seem to find the writing as difficult as you used to. Have you read anything else by Ashapurna Devi? Sometimes, earlier, I found your writing a bit difficult but now it is very fluent. Now, while reading, I want to pat you on the back and say shabaash: well done! If a writer starts worrying about what he or she has left out or forgotten, they might not be able to write even a single line. So the best thing to do is just to write, and then look at your writing later and clean it up. And then, you leave the further cleaning to those whose job it is to read and write, like editors. If you want to become a writer, the only way to do so is to determine to sit down and write and then to do so. This is something you have also understood. Your Tatush is right in telling you that if you make mistakes, don’t worry: just write.” The more letters I read from Jethu, the more I felt encouraged to write.

  Sharmila’s letters were very different. She wrote to me in Hindi. I thought she must have a girl working in her home just like me. Does she deal with her in the same way as she does with me? She did not treat me like domestic help at all: rather, it was as if we were friends. Tatush would read her letters out to me and I would then copy them down in my broken Bengali and read them again later when I felt low. She said, “Baby, think about why you are so upset with your father. Put yourself in his shoes for once and see how you feel. Even if you feel you cannot forgive him, you must do so. We must forgive people even if we don’t like them…If you come here, we’ll both dress up and dance and sing. I like dressing up sometimes and when you are here, you dress up for me and I will for you. When we meet each other we will laugh to our heart’s content, even if there is nothing to laugh about, we’ll laugh. Baby, do you feel surprised when someone tells you how much they like your writing? And do you wonder how your difficult, hard life has suddenly become transformed into such beautiful prose?”

  I was amused at her asking me about dressing up because I have never liked to dress up. I had seen so many girls and women who, the moment they thought they were going out, would pull out powder, lipstick, comb, sindoor…they’d put on their saris and then preen in front of the mirror and ask their friends how they looked.

  EVERY MORNING I READ THE PAPERS. I DO NOT KNOW English but I still looked at the English papers, sometimes just at the pictures, and I would ask Tatush to explain them to me. Then Tatush would say, “Try to read the words that are below the pictures.” I’d then read the letters, one by one, and Tatush would keep nodding or saying, Hmm, hmm. After I finished reading the characters, Tatush would pronounce the whole word and explain its meaning to me. Sometimes I had so many questions for him that he could not manage to read the newspaper himself. Perhaps that was why sometimes he would say to me, “Baby, don’t you need to send the children to school?”

  “Yes, but there is still time,” I’d say.

  “When will you go? You’ll be late: you’d better go now.”

  And then I would get up and go. Sending the children to school was not the only task I had to do: there was so much else. The moment Arjun-da woke up, for example, I had to get breakfast and some food ready for him. He liked to eat special things and he did not like cold rotis, so they had to be made fresh each time. I did not mind this: I like cooking for people and feeding them, and even when I was with my husband, any time I made something new, I would share it with everyone around. Perhaps that was what made him so unhappy with me!

  I also liked looking at cookery books as much as I liked reading books and poems and stories. Reading the newspaper had become like an addiction and everything that Tatush read to me or told me about from the newspaper was like a new discovery for me. Perhaps this was why I waited at the gate every morning for the papers to come.

  One day I was late waking up. When I came down I saw that Tatush had fetched the papers and he was reading them. I went quickly to the kitchen to make tea. I gave him his tea and picked up the other paper and started to look at the
pictures. Tatush said, “Where is your tea? Go and fetch it.” I brought the tea and stood there drinking it, and he said, “Why are you standing? Sit down.”

  I sat down in a chair, put my glass of tea down on the table, and began to look at the paper again. Tatush said, “Baby, it has been a year since you came to this house. Tell me, how do you feel about this? What is it that you like and what don’t you like? What do you think you have learned since you came here?” And then he went back to his paper.

  Baby thought to herself, Is this any kind of question? She did not give him an answer. She went and stood by the window and looked out at the sky. Baby remembered her mother and thought how much she had wanted that her children learn to read and write and lead a good life. She did not manage to study herself, but as long as she was with her children, she never stopped urging them to do so. Had she been alive today and seen that her Baby was able to read and was learning to do more, how happy she would have been. Baby looked at the sky as if searching for her mother, as if to say to her, “Ma, come and see once, I still want to read and write, I want my children to read and write. They need your blessings, Ma.” Baby was talking to her mother, and her face was wet with tears, her shirt damp as they slid down her chest and fell to the ground.

  THE TEA HAD GONE COLD. SUDDENLY BABY HEARD FOOTSTEPS and started. She looked up and saw Arjun-da was awake and was coming down the stairs. “You people are drinking tea already?” he said. “Where’s mine?” She headed off to the kitchen to make tea when someone rang the bell at the gate. Outside was a boy from a neighboring house. He had a parcel that he gave to her, saying, “This came for you yesterday. It was delivered to our house by mistake.”

  She took the packet and gave it to Tatush. But Tatush handed it back. “This is for you. Here, take it—see what’s inside.” She took the packet and went into the kitchen and put the water to boil for Arjun-da’s tea. Then she opened the packet. There was a magazine inside. She started to turn the pages when her own name jumped out at her. Surprised, she looked again, and it was true, it was there! The words said: Aalo Aandhari, Baby Halder!* Her heart leaped for joy! It was as if it had begun to turn cartwheels. In the middle of all this she remembered Jethu’s story about Ashapurna Devi writing after doing all her other housework. She thought, Jethu was right, one can write along with doing household work.

  Suddenly she noticed that the water had nearly boiled dry! She quickly made the tea and gave it to Arjun-da, and then ran upstairs to her children, shouting, “Look! Look! I have something to show you, look…” The children came running and she said to them, “See! Tell me what is written here.” Her daughter hesitatingly read each letter and made out the words: Aalo Aandhari, Baby Halder…“Ma! Your name in a book!!” Both children began to laugh for joy. She looked at them and tenderness welled up in her heart. She took them into her arms and held them close. And suddenly, the thought came to her that she had forgotten something: “Let me go, let me go!” she said to the children, “I’ll be back, right away!” and she ran downstairs. How silly I am! she thought, I saw my name in the magazine and forgot everything! She came downstairs and knelt down to touch Tatush’s feet. He put his hand on her head and blessed her.

  About the Author

  BABY HALDER continues to work as a maid for the employer who discovered 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.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Copyright

  A LIFE LESS ORDINARY. Hindi translation (Aalo Aandhari) copyright © 2002 by Prabodh Kumar. Bengali original (Aalo Aandhari) copyright © 2004 by Baby Halder. English translation copyright © 2006 by Urvashi Butalia. North American edition copyright © 2007 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition © MAY 2008 ISBN: 9780061871245

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  * Aalo Aandhari (From Darkness to Light) is the title of Baby Halder’s book in Hindi and Bengali.