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A Life Less Ordinary
Life Less Ordinary is a "curious" book beginning with Baby’s childhood, her marriage a month before she would turn 13 and her motherhood at the age of 14, moving on to her rude eviction into adult life, struggling to come to grips with an inconsiderate and illiterate husband and the strain of raising three children almost single-handedly until she climbs on a train to Faridabad, and finally describing her struggle to find a livelihood and the unexpected discovery of the writer in her. This unusual autobiography, originally written in Bangla (Aalo Aandhari or From Darkness to Light), was first translated into Hindi and then into English. It is a "pathetic" tale, without frills and a reflection of society. She was searching for her younger brother and despite being spurned by relatives, she resolved to be independent and worked as a maid in the house of Prabodh Kumar, grandson of Munshi Prem Chand, writer and anthropologist. He not only treated Baby and her children well, but also inspired her to read (she started with Taslima Nasreen) and write. She then wrote her story... and it was gripping. Written mostly in the first person, the story lapses into the third person at poignant moments, as if she were intuitively aware that the only way of conveying these emotional climaxes was to distance herself from her narrative. The most remarkable thing about Baby’s memoir is her self-portrait: a striking metamorphosis over a few pages from an unreflecting, passive woman, unquestioningly submitting to what life gave her, to a writer capable of evoking all the searing, suppressed memories that made up her life. The memoir opens in a descriptive copybook manner, with the family in Jammu and Kashmir, where her father worked as a serviceman. She makes half-hearted attempt to describe the snowflakes, flowers and even a rainbow in the mountains. It is clear from the start that this is no conventional little girl talking of pretty flowers and rainbows, but an adult voice with an adult’s grasp of harsh reality. In a flat, emotionless manner of an abused person, she describes the difficulties her family faced when it moved to Bengal and her father abandoned them. Four-year-old Baby missed nothing, and the adult Baby sets down with a child’s directness the bald truth of their existence. The story flows on for the next few pages very much as it lay in Baby’s mind all these years, raw and undigested. It is clear from her random and flat narrative that far from trying to make sense of her senseless childhood, Baby had spent most of her life trying to forget it. The events she recounts so relentlessly are almost horrific in their randomness, but there is a perceptible change as the narrative progresses. We see her dwelling on events instead of rushing past them: those searing memories she had not confided in anyone before, not even herself. She is a character and a source of inspiration. Her book is not about the meaning of life or the angst of living; it is about living. It is the journey of a woman who dares to face cruel surroundings in search of an extraordinary life. Still in her early 30s, Baby has a lot more to offer. Expect a sequel and translations in German and French.
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