She is confused until Raji says he wants her as his wife. He wants Koly to come to his farm with him. Raji comes back and tells Koly that he is fixing up his farm and building a home. Mala also steals expensive cloth and thread from Mr. Mala is good at embroidery but very outspoken. However he leaves to fix his farm.Īt her new job, Koly makes friends with a girl named Mala. Raji owns a farm and drives rickshaws for money. Koly also teaches the rickshaw driver, Raji, how to read. Together they find jobs making marigold garlands and beaded bracelets. At the home Koly meets a nice widow named Tanu. She sees the rickshaw driver again and he offers to bring her to a house for widows. The rickshaw driver says to go to the temple and pray so the monks will give her food. Koly cries because her sass has left her. He tells her that her sass left on a train hours ago. Koly goes to buy the food but when she goes back to the temple her sass is not there. They make a stop in Vrindavan to pray at a temple.

One day Sass gets a letter from her brother inviting them to live with him in Delhi. Soon Koly's sassur dies and now both Koly and her sass are widows. Koly is sad because Chandra was her friend and now she is leaving. She treats Koly as just another mouth to feed. Koly's sass ( mother-in-law) is not a nice woman. He teaches Koly to read and shows her a book of poems signed by the author Tagore. Koly's sassur ( father- in-law) is a kind man who teaches students. While going to the city of the Ganges River, Hari dies. Hari's parents had decided to take Hari to the Ganges River and Koly comes along too. But soon Koly finds out that Hari has tuberculosis and he will die very soon.

Once they are married, Koly must go to live with his family. Her husband is a sickly, young boy named Hari. Based on Indian tradition, her family has made an arranged marriage for her. Koly is a 13 year-old girl who lives in Vrindavan India with her parents and two brothers. It has been translated into German, Spanish, and Polish. This book won the National Book Award in 2000 in the category of Young People's Literature. When this situation doesn't last, Koly has to find a way to make her future. Like many Indian girls her age, Koly becomes a teenage bride in an ' arranged marriage.' Her husband soon dies and Koly becomes a widow, living with her late husband's parents. Homeless Bird is a book by Gloria Whelan, an American author, about life in India for a 13-year-old girl named Koly.

Homeless bird by gloria whelan