Homeless Bird: Part 1

By GLORIA WHELAN

"Koly, you are thirteen and growing every day," Maa said to me. "It's time for you to have a husband."

I knew why. There were days when my maa took only a bit of rice for herself so that the rest of us - my baap, my brothers, and I - might have more.

"It's one of my days to fast," she would say, as if it were a holy thing, but I knew it was because there was not enough food to go around.

The day I left home, there would be a little more for everyone else. I had known the day was coming, but the regret I saw in Maa's eyes made me tremble.

Publisher: HarperCollins

Age group: 9-12 years


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