Homeless bird

Author: Gloria Whelan (USA)
Publisher:
Publish Date: April 1, 2004
Features: The 13-year-old protagonist, Koly, is a sensible girl raised in an Indian rural village. Due to extreme poverty, the family's highest aspiration is to marry her off as soon as possible, so they can reduce the portion they share from the table. However, marrying off a daughter requires a dowry. After selling her mother's wedding lantern and copper vase, they sold their only thin cow, and the meager dowry they managed to gather was enough to ensure Koly could never marry into a family that was even slightly more well-off. The family that took her in was also poor, and they married her to use her dowry to send their son—Koly's husband—to the sacred Ganges River, which is revered by Indians. There, the 16-year-old sick boy might regain his health through the divine power of the Ganges River, or the river might carry his ashes to heaven. After enduring countless hardships during the journey, and having caught a chill from the river water, Koly's husband died on the night they arrived at the Ganges. From then on, Koly became someone with no identity—she could no longer return to her parents as their daughter, nor could she remain anyone's wife or daughter-in-law. Her mother-in-law stole her widow's relief money, leaving Koly penniless and with no chance of escape. She was reduced to her mother-in-law's slave. Fortunately, her father-in-law—a struggling schoolteacher—taught Koly to read. As letters turned into words, and words into thoughts, Koly's world began to fill with increasingly rich colors. Soon after, her father-in-law passed away, her younger sister-in-law married far away, and her mother-in-law sold all their belongings to follow her brother to Delhi. On the way, she schemed to abandon Koly in a place known as a "widow's city." This place was filled with widows from all over India, abandoned in various ways, most of whom could only rely on begging and chanting prayers in temples to sustain their meager lives. Fortunately, Koly was taken to a relief center called the "Widow's Home" by a rickshaw puller. There, she applied for relief money and began to try and support herself. For the first time, she gained a sense of dignity as a human being, and her artistic talent and spiritual world expanded like never before. Meanwhile, the Tagore poetry collection she carried with her became a beautiful spiritual refuge for the impoverished people around her, and it also sparked a deep, heartfelt love between her and the rickshaw puller. What is truly remarkable is that, though the story is about a Cinderella, it is not the tale of a Cinderella meeting a prince. Instead, it explores a profound spiritual question: how can a person possess a noble soul. At the end of the book, Koly rejects the hypocritical life of a "city artist" who was just a step away from her, and with full hope of happiness, she embroiders her dowry. Meanwhile, the former rickshaw puller has built her a small house in the countryside with large windows, where she will pursue her beloved embroidery art and read her favorite Tagore poetry collection. Through the large windows, she will see the fields swaying in the breeze and her husband working in the fields.