Baby Halder is an Indian domestic help and author, whose acclaimed autobiography Aalo Aandhari (A Life Less Ordinary) in 2006 describes her harsh life growing up and as a domestic worker.
Seeing her interest in books while dusting his book shelves, retired anthropology professor Prabodh Kumar and a grandson of noted Hindi literary giant Munshi Premchand encouraged her to first read leading authors. When her memoirs was completed, Kumar also aided in editing the manuscript, shared it with local literary circle and translated it into Hindi. It immediately got extensive media attention as it threw light on the hard lives led by domestic servants in Asia, and within two-year it had published two more editions.
Written originally in Bengali, it was later translated into 24 languages, including 13 foreign languages. Born in Jammu and Kashmir, Halder now lives in 24.Parganas, West Bengal. She was featured in all major periodicals and newspapers in India and abroad, including The Sunday Times and The New York Times. A documentary film on Baby Halder has been made by Anu Menon from the London School of Films and features on her have been telecast by almost all TV channels including Doordarshan, NDTV, Aaj Tak, Star News, Channel 7, BBC and CNN. Aalo Andhari was translated in to English in 2006 as ‘A Life Less Ordinary’ and released by noted actor and activist Nandita Das. The book is included in class XI textbook by NCERT. Baby Halder ‘s second book ‘Ishat Rupantar’ has been translated and published in four languages. Her third book ‘Ghore Pherar Path’ has been published in Bengali in 2015.
Gateway LitFest in this 4th Edition congrats her perseverance and dedication and honours Baby Halder as Gateway LitFest Women Writer.
