Homeless Bird

When Mrs. Devi takes her to the sari shop, Koly experiences riding in a car and feeling air conditioning for the first time. On the way, Mrs. Devi tells Koly about her family. Her paternal grandmother was widowed and abandoned in Vrindavan. Her son—Mrs. Devi’s baap—was told that his mother had died. He learned the truth and spent years looking for her in Vrindavan but never found her. Eventually, he became wealthy. When he died, he left money in his will for a widow’s house, which is why Mrs. Devi funds Maa Kamala’s house.

Koly meets the sari maker, Mr. Das. He asks her to show him what she can do. He doesn’t want her to copy another design but to show what’s in her own mind. Koly stitches an image of the heron that she and Raji saw at the river. Pleased, Mr. Das tells her to come back the next day to begin her new job. The pay rate he offers is three times what she makes stringing marigolds. Working for Mr. Das and being encouraged to create her own designs, Koly stitches her memories. This way, she can symbolically keep or get back what she lost. Koly makes friends with the other women who work for Mr. Das and is happily surprised to realize that they judge her not by her age but by the quality of her work.

One of the women is 19-year-old Mala. She’s sophisticated and confident, and Koly is eager to befriend her. Mala invites Koly to spend the night at her house to “see how delicious freedom is” (180). However, Maa Kamala won’t give Koly permission, saying she knows Mala and that her room is no place for a young girl. Koly is angry and decides to go anyway but to lie about where she is. She tells Maa Kamala that she’s seeing a movie with Tanu but then goes to a party at Mala’s. There, men and women mingle, something unheard of in the social settings Koly is used to. They wear jeans and T-shirts instead of traditional garments. Koly notices an expensive veil that is from Mr. Das’s shop in Mala’s room. Mala says she took it to get back at “the Shrew” (184), the woman who embroidered it. After this, Koly doesn’t want to stay, but Mala introduces her to an artist named Kajal, and Koly feels that she’ll look foolish if she leaves.

Kajal pressures Koly, saying that she must come to his room on her day off so that he can paint her. He urges her to try bhang, which she knows is made from marijuana leaf. Kajal becomes pushy. He gives her a drink, and soon after she tastes it, she feels the room begin to whirl. A musician named Binu tells her that Kajal laced the drink with bhang. He helps Koly get back to Maa Kamala’s safely. At work the next day, Mala tells Koly that if she says anything about the veil, she’ll tell Maa Kamala that Koly went to her party and took bhang. Koly feels foolish and angry, but she’s distracted from those emotions when Raji returns the next day.

Koly and Raji go to the river to talk. Koly tells him about the night at Mala’s. She worries that he’ll judge her for it, but he says it’s in the past. In his village, Raji has been fixing up his family’s house, and a government man is teaching him how to make his land more fertile. He tells Koly that he must go back soon, but he wants her to go with him as his wife. He doesn’t want an arranged marriage, like the unhappy one between his parents. Koly assures Raji that she cares for him. She wants to say yes but is hesitant to leave her embroidery work with Mr. Das and her friends from Maa Kamala’s house. She tells Raji she isn’t saying no but thinks they should wait a bit. They agree to write to each other in the meantime.

Koly and Tanu move out of Maa Kamala’s house and rent a room together in a building that four families share. Mr. Das catches Mala stealing and fires her. In the heat and dust of the dry season, city life begins to wear on Koly. She longs for her future with Raji in the rural village that his weekly letters describe. In one letter, Raji writes that he’s working on a surprise for Koly. When it’s finally finished, he tells her that he has built a room in the house for her embroidery work. The room has windows on two sides, so she can look out on the courtyard and tamarind tree or on the fields where he’ll be working. Because of Raji’s thoughtfulness, Koly’s lingering doubts about marrying him vanish. She begins embroidering a new dowry quilt and tells him that they’ll marry when it’s finished.

Mr. Das agrees to let Koly do her work from home. She’ll visit the city every few months to bring him finished work and get new materials. She promises him that she’ll make time, even with a household and children to care for. In return, he promises to give her a fine sari as part of her dowry. Tanu and Koly are both sad about parting. They’ll miss each other greatly, but Koly promises to visit whenever she comes to the city. Hearing of Koly’s marriage plans, Mrs. Devi commissions Koly to embroider a sari for her from her new home. She asks that Koly find something from Tagore’s poems to use as the sari’s border. Koly immediately decides to stitch the homeless bird, “flying at last to its home” (211).