India, like many other 3rd world countries, is home to some of the most under documented labour sectors in the world. Even within those, domestic work in the country mostly goes unnoticed in the collective consciousness of the country. One of the major reasons for it being that way could be attributed to the fact that it is mostly taken up by women from marginalised communities and low castes. Working without contracts or under any strictly enforced legal framework, they represent one of the most exploited workforces in modern Indian history.

Baby Haldar, a domestic worker from Bengal, wrote her autobiography and published it in Hindi in 2002. Filled with harrowing details and extreme conditions women like her experience, it is without a doubt a difficult read. Urvashi Butalia translated the book to English in 2006. During translation, one of the major changes that Butalia made was to alter the title from the original Aalo Andhari (Light and Darkness) to A Life Less Ordinary. The second title fits snug with the narrative of the story. A story about an ordinary woman who lives a life that somehow the society has deemed less than others. This essay will try to discuss the book in more detail, and the intersectional aspects of Baby’s life – thereby others like her – as well.

Brief Life Summary of Baby

Born in Kashmir and brought up in Bengal, Baby was one of the four children her parents had. When she was four years old, her mother ran away from the family with her youngest son following extended absence and abuse she suffered from her husband. Having an affinity to learn, she was kept in school with the help of people around her. By the time her sister was in her early teenage years, she was married off – a fate which awaited Baby as well. At the young age of 12, Baby was married to someone fourteen years older than her. Over the many years she lived with him, she sustained constant abuse from him. She birthed three children before she became an “adult”, and finally at the age of 25, she ran away from her home to Delhi. She continued working as a domestic worker but faced many hurdles of living as a young single mother in a foreign land. But her fortune was turned around when she started working for an anthropology professor who encouraged her to continue her education she left from childhood. Armed with the ability to read and write, she wrote her autobiography and published it to great acclaim.

Although Baby mentions very little of caste in her main narrative, one can infer it lurking in the shadows from a few oft hand comments and acts upper caste people make with her around. The oppression she faces comes from the intersections of her gender, low caste, low class, the line of work she is under, and her being a single parent in a country where single mothers are actively shunned and socially prosecuted against.

Onslaught of Violence and Oppression from Multiple Directions

Throughout the book, Baby keeps writing about the violence women face from their family, employers and strangers alike. Violence and trauma has always been a part of life, and for the women she writes about. Her elder sister being murdered, and a neighbouring woman being set on fire by their respective spouses, leave a mark on her as well. Absent and violent men are a constant in her life, whether it be her father during her formative years or her husband when she undergoes an intensely traumatic labour process. 

Her oppression does not only stem from her being any woman. It is a resultant of a brutal combination of poverty, patriarchy, her geographic location, and more. The disadvantage these factors give her compared to the average Indian, further entrap her into even more discriminating situations. Her location in this system of discrimination forces her to move to places that exerts even more discriminatory positions – such as the one of domestic labour, which is rife with inhumane working conditions. Furthermore, her children being reliant on her for survival, thanks to the absent and abusive father, locked her in the receiving end of being continuously dominated by her employers without any option or chance to get away from. She is completely under the mercy of them – which naturally is an alien concept for most Indians.

She continuously observes the constant baggage women around her have to carry, and narrates them all in detail. The first instance of this observation comes from just before her mother ran away from their helpless living conditions. She writes, “Ma thought of taking up a job but that would have meant going out of the house, which she had never done…Another of her worries was, what would people say? But worrying about what people will say does not help to fill an empty stomach, does it?” (Haldar, 2002). Further she is keenly aware as to how most of those instances don’t have any logic or reasoning at all. The understanding of the sheer unfairness and constant of it all is a catalyst to her eventually running away from the house she used to live in.

Baby’s story also is proof that hard work and aspirations almost always never pay off if they keep on facing oppression from multiple fronts. Throughout her life, she kept striving for enough education so as to not rely on anyone else for her survival. But the patriarchal forces keep her away from attaining that very basic right – although she is somewhat aware of her predicament, due to her being denied an education or any support system her ability to completely comprehend the full weight of the oppressive living condition she is under is hampered at best.

The Plight of Domestic Workers in India

A large majority of domestic work is still taken up by women in this country. Instead of considering them as crucial workers who are essential to the socio-economic structures, they are exploited and made to work in inhumane hours and conditions because there is very little rights or protection that is afforded to them. The work they take is considered a natural extension of what women are supposed to do anyways (Ganeriwal, 2018).

Considering that most of these women workers also come from the intersections of low castes, class, and poverty, they have very little choice but to stay in the profession. Further, their lack of choice enables their employer to exploit their labour in whatever ways they see fit. The same can be said about the violence they face in their workplace. In her book, Baby chronicles her experiences working for an upper-class employer who works her to the bone. Not only that, she is not allowed to talk or interact with other domestic workers at all. This environment of denying support from their fellow workers and keeping the workers in isolation, creates the perfect environment for sustained exploitation of their slave-like labour conditions.

Although two separate legislations were introduced, Domestic Workers Welfare and Social Security Act, 2010 and Domestic Workers’ Welfare Bill, 2016; none has seen the light of day till now.

Conclusion

Writing mostly in first person, there are moments where Baby’s language shifts to the third person whenever she recalls a memory or an event that was intensely traumatic. Seeing oneself in the third person is something many victims of intense trauma undergo. She knowingly or unknowingly brings that very perspective onto the page as well.

Baby’s life is one that is filled with constant trauma, but that trauma and setbacks she suffers from does not merely occur because of her gender alone. The intersectionality of her various identities keeps her in the unique place she is kept under. And in that sense Butalia is perfectly right in calling her life one of less than ordinary, because her unique oppression is more or less same for a large number of women in the country, and the larger consciousness deems it less ordinary.