The book is a translation of a novel by Krishna Baldev Vaid, a pre-eminent author of Hindi stories, novels, and dramas. Dedicated to hard-working women domestics, The Diary of a Maidservant delineates the life and thoughts of Shanti, a young woman who earns a living as a casual household help. Through the "diary," given as a gift to Shanti, the teenage maidservant slowly discovers her impulses, dreams, and contradictions, and the reader is gradually drawn into the complications of everyday relationships between masters and servants and men and women.