Karno's Daughter: The Lives of an Indian Maid

About the Book

A MAID IN THE CITY, A RICE FARMER IN HER VILLAGE, RACONTEUR, SURVIVOR-KARNO'S DAUGHTER IS THE LIFE STORY OF A REMARKABLE WOMAN.

This is a biography of Buttermilk, the author's maid in Calcutta. She wishes to remain anonymous; Buttermilk is one of her nicknames.

Her life straddles the city, the village and the suburbs. It brims with stories of betrayal and devastation, but also with unexpected aesthetics and love in unlikely places.

This story is a weave of many threads: her family across multiple generations, her city work and her struggle as a rice farmer. We follow her across five decades as she forges a life with creativity and grit, and one antenna permanently tuned to the land. We witness her tackle brutal pressure and yet remain free of callus.

With wit and spirit, Buttermilk lives an uproarious trapeze act, without a safety net from god or country. But for how long?

About the Author

Rimli Sengupta came to writing after a half-life in computer science academia. She has written two books in Bengali, E-janala (2009) and Rimil-36 (2011), and a work of translation from Bengali, Indonesia: Travels with Tagore (2017). Her short fiction has appeared in Civil Lines and the Indian Quarterly. She is the author of Karno's Daughter: The Lives of an Indian Maid (Context, 2018) and A Lost People's Archive: A Novel (Aleph, 2023).