Aalo Aandhari is the autobiography of Baby Halder, a domestic worker who battled poverty, hardship, violence and after a lot of struggle finally managed to make a name for herself as a writer.
The book traces Baby's difficult life since she was abandoned by her mother and left with a cruel, abusive father at a very young age.
[1][2] When Prabodh Kumar, a retired professor of anthropology and a grandson of Munshi Premchand found his new 29-year-old Bengali maid Baby Haldar's busy hands still as she dusted the books, he encouraged her to read.
So she picked up the pen, with the same curious blend of grim determination and blind faith, covering the first few pages as painstakingly as if it was yet one more chore in her busy day.
Soon a lot more pages followed and with editorial help from Kumar and his friends, Ashok Seksariya and Ramesh Goswami and the result was a memoir.
She flees on a train to Delhi, where, like many other desperate women, she seeks work cleaning the homes of the capital's rising middle class.