Homeless Bird

These chapters contain plot points that further develop Koly’s internal conflict between hope and hopelessness. Several events occur that diminish hope: the absence of Chandra after her marriage, Sassur’s isolation and then death, Sass’s cruelty, and Koly’s despair after trading her silver earrings for the Tagore book of poems. Koly’s abandonment by the stray dog and bandicoot likewise diminishes hope, as well as foreshadows her abandonment by Sass in Vrindavan. Few plot points inspire hope in Koly. The thought that she can have her pension forwarded gives her hope of someday escaping her life with Sass. A later source of hope for Koly is removing her widow’s sari and Maa Kamala’s assertion that Koly is a young woman with a life ahead of her. Although she’s treated poorly and victimized repeatedly, especially by Sass, she never loses hope. She needs only small things to renew her hope and keep fighting for survival and the right to define herself and control her own life.

Koly’s character arc thematically defines her Coming-of-Age as a Journey from Helplessness to Independence. In the Mehta household, she’s helpless because, despite her efforts, she’s unable to change how Sass feels about her and treats her. Even when Koly regrets her mischief and does everything Sass expects of her to perfection, it makes no difference. On a larger scale, this helplessness represents Koly’s inability to make society value her based on her character and her actions, as well as her inability to break free from the limited roles available to women within the framework of India’s social customs. These limitations make Koly feel like a caged animal. They force her into a situation in which she must struggle to meet the most basic human needs, an experience that has a distressing effect on her character. Koly recognizes this during her first harrowing week in Vrindavan: “I knew that my hunger and my fear were making me into another person altogether, a greedy and coldhearted person I despised” (129). This exposes a poignant truth about societal cruelty toward women: It often occurs at the hands of other women. Situations outside their control influence them in ways that reinforce the cycle of cruelty and oppression, such as forcing them to compete for places to sleep in doorways. Koly’s experience in that first week after being abandoned thematically exemplifies The Impacts of Cultural Traditions on Women’s Rights and Identities. However, things begin to change when she goes to Maa Kamala’s house, and removing her widow’s sari symbolizes this important turning point in her character arc. Koly compares the act of shedding the sari to a snake shedding its old skin. Like the snake, she’s ridding herself of her “old, confining skin” (138), her life of helpless dependence on the Mehtas.

The various settings in these chapters develop a thematic exploration of the concept and definition of home. Maa Kamala and her widow’s house offer a stark contrast to the Mehta household. Living with the Mehtas, Koly longed to escape because she didn’t feel at home. At Maa Kamala’s, Koly finds kindness and discovers a sense of belonging amongst other women who have faced the same challenges and hardships she has. One of the women, Tanu, says, “Maa Kamala is nice, but she is very strict” (139). Given the ways Maa Kamala supports the widows who live there, what Tanu calls strictness is, in essence, protectiveness. No one has ever protected Koly. Her brothers were often unkind. When her parents worried that the marriage to Hari wouldn’t be a good one, they said nothing could be done and absolved themselves of responsibility. Koly’s sass stole her pension, abused her, and abandoned her. Maa Kamala’s protectiveness toward young women who’ve been victimized is a form of love. She gives it because she sees their inherent value and worth. The symbolic importance of the widow’s house in Koly’s life introduces and contributes to one of the novel’s primary themes: Defining “Home” in Terms of Love and Belonging.

The novel continues to develop the text’s themes through animal symbolism. In the Chapter 6 scene when Koly leaves the government office in the village, she hurries through the marketplace, “past the man with the trained monkey on a chain and the stall where birds [a]re imprisoned in tiny cages,” and notes that one of the cages holds “a mynah bird that had been blinded to make it sing” (98). These animals symbolize girls and women in arranged marriages, the text’s most prominent example of a cultural tradition that impacts women’s rights and identities. Like caged and chained animals, they have little to no say in what happens to them. In arranged marriages, girls and women are treated as commodities in an economic exchange. Their husband’s families take them in because of the benefits they reap in return: labor, a dowry, and offspring. When girls like Koly are ill-treated or abused in arranged marriages (whether through physical, verbal, or emotional abuse), they’re like the blinded mynah bird: harmed for the benefit of others.