Homeless Bird

Through Koly’s story, Homeless Bird explores entrenched cultural traditions in India and their impacts on women’s rights and identities. The novel focuses on four specific types of cultural traditions: gender norms and disparities; arranged marriages; dowries; and the status of widows. The text demonstrates how these customs foster a lack of autonomy and financial security for women and girls, provide inadequate protection for their rights, and create a cycle of cruelty toward them, all of which makes them feel worthless and hopeless. Koly’s resilience, along with the help of some well-placed advocates, enables her to eventually overcome these adversities, develop her sense of self, and find happiness. For many women in her society, however, the entrenched cultural traditions that disempower women condemn them to lives of despair.

At age 13, Koly has never attended school, though her brothers do. She begs to go, but her maa sees school as a waste of time and resources for girls. Traditional gender roles relegate women to cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing. Sending a girl to school requires expenditures on clothes, books, and tuition, and means that a girl’s mother has less help at home. Superstition and stigma reinforce negative attitudes toward girls’ education. One example is the taboo against girls learning to read. Koly’s brothers remind her that when she marries, her husband will expect her to obey him. Numerous examples in the story portray this power structure, in which men have authority over women, as an intractable part of life in rural communities like Koly’s. At weddings, for example, men eat first, and women get the leftovers. Hari throws temper tantrums when he doesn’t get his way, and his maa always gives in to him because he’s her only son. Allowing boys to act however they want, the text suggests, reinforces a cycle in which men treat women poorly. Women may also reinforce gender disparities. When Koly contemplates Chandra’s arranged marriage, she worries that the husband might not treat Chandra well. Chandra replies: “If I am a good wife, he will be good to me” (79). Her attitude implies that she accepts the idea that a woman in an abusive marriage is responsible for the abuse.

Koly has been socialized to accept arranged marriages for young girls as a given. She doesn’t reject the idea, but at 13 years old, she doesn’t feel ready to leave her family and home; she knows that many arranged marriages bind young girls to old men. Koly’s maa and baap have ambivalent feelings toward Koly’s arranged marriage yet see it as a necessity they must accept. Baap cries before the wedding, saying that Koly “is dressed like a woman, but she is only a child” (18). Despite this, and despite their misgivings about the groom, Maa and Baap reject the possibility of postponing the wedding. They believe that “if a wedding does not take place at the appointed time, some evil is sure to come to the bride” (16). This is another example of superstition reinforcing an oppressive social structure, in this case, by leading Koly’s parents to believe that they’re doing what’s best for her. Koly’s marriage puts her in an unhappy and abusive situation that she’s unable to leave. Just as refusing to go through with the marriage would bring Koly’s family shame, not fulfilling her duties as a wife or trying to return to them as a widow would shame and dishonor them. As a bride in her husband’s home, Koly has few rights and no apparent mechanism to protect herself or her interests. Girls like Koly have no control over whom they marry, when they marry, or how their lives go after the wedding. Their sasses—their husband’s mothers—maintain full authority in the household. For Koly, this means that it can never feel like her home. She feels like a caged animal without the means to escape.

As a cultural tradition, dowries connect to arranged marriages yet wield an influence of their own as a tool for families to increase their wealth. In a society that treats unmarried individuals as marks of shame on their families, enormous pressure exists for a bride’s family to meet dowry demands, however exorbitant. They often experience extreme financial hardship to afford a dowry. For the groom’s family, obtaining a large dowry often becomes more important than compatibility for the prospective couple, leading to inappropriate alliances that benefit the groom’s family but not the bride or groom. Hari’s parents mislead Koly’s family and seek a marriage they know is inappropriate because Koly’s dowry is the only way they can afford Hari’s doctor bills and spiritual treatments. Through Hari’s parents, Homeless Bird demonstrates how economic hardship can lead people to accept and reinforce customs harmful to women.

After Hari dies, Koly’s first thought is, “I am nothing now” (52) but then concedes, “I am something. I am a widow” (52). This recognition makes her sob, suggesting that being a widow in her society is worse than being nothing. The novel’s subsequent events reveal that widows in India are afforded no status, no protection, and no resources. Upon a woman’s marriage, her family of origin cuts ties with her. Her husband’s family is then essentially her only family. During the marriage, the family is duty-bound to meet the bride’s basic needs, like food and shelter. If the marriage ends because of the groom’s death, however, his family may feel that their duty to the bride has also ended. Even the government doesn’t protect Koly’s rights as a widow. When she tells a government worker her monthly checks are being stolen, he’s unconcerned and refuses to help her rectify the problem. When Koly has no address in Vrindavan, the government workers don’t allow her to pick up her checks at their office, seeming to prefer that she remain penniless. Koly asks another widow in Vrindavan why her husband’s family didn’t take care of her. She answers, “Once they had my husband’s property, they had no more use for me. They said widows were unlucky to have about. The truth is that I am too old for hard work” (124). Such attitudes suggest that society attributes value to women only as supports and resources for men, not as individuals. Trying to survive on the streets of Vrindavan without support or resources turns Koly into “a greedy, coldhearted person” (129), just like Sass. This comparison suggests that Sass became cruel because of the same systemic factors now oppressing Koly, in a cycle of women devaluing or competing with other women. Maa Kamala telling Koly to put aside her widow’s sari, saying that Koly is “not a widow but a young woman with a life ahead of [her]” (137), helps her believe in her worth and her future. For women who aren’t fortunate enough to meet someone like Maa Kamala, hopelessness and despair may be all they know.