Born Behind Bars

Kabir and Amma live in a cell with three other women, all of whom Kabir refers to using nicknames inside his head. Amma insists that he view them as family, though they’re not his biological family. Grandma Knife is a tough, assertive, and smart woman who is caring and protective toward Amma and Kabir. Aunty Cloud is quiet but kind, and Mouse Girl, who is new, is flustered and hungry. Amma and Aunty Cloud wish Kabir a happy ninth birthday. Grandma Knife says that Kabir’s too old to still be living in the prison. Kabir doesn’t understand what she means because she’s much older than him and she still lives in prison. Kabir doesn’t like Mouse Girl because she’s pushy and doesn’t say thank you, but Amma encourages him to be nice to her anyway.

The guard, Mrs. Snake, accompanies the group of women from Kabir’s cell and other cells to use the restroom. Mouse Girl shoves ahead, pulling on Kabir’s T-shirt and ripping it. Amma encourages him to not fuss about it because her needs are probably greater than theirs right now. Kabir enjoys the restroom simply because it’s the only time he gets to be totally alone.

The power in the prison goes out, so the fan stops working and the cell becomes very hot and humid. Everyone is hungry, but they haven’t been given breakfast yet. Aunty Cloud has some candies that her children bring her when they visit each Saturday. She shares these with Kabir, who offers some to Mouse Girl to please Amma, who wants Kabir to be “good” above all else. There are several reasons to be good: As Amma says, it will help keep him out of prison in the future, and it will please God. Additionally, Grandma Knife says if he’s good, he’ll have a better life, and if he’s bad, he might go to hell, which is even hotter than this prison cell. Kabir thinks the best reason to be good is to please Amma. Seeing Amma happy is better than the candy, so Kabir is glad he shared with Mouse Girl even though she’s greedy and takes most of it.

The women get in line for breakfast. Kabir’s rice has a fly in it, so Grandma Knife trades plates with him. Amma often tells stories during meals, and Kabir requests the story about Krishna, the Hindu god who, like Kabir, was born in a prison. The night Krishna was born, the prison guards went to sleep, and the doors opened magically. Krishna’s mother and father were both imprisoned by his mom’s demon brother. His mom wrapped him in a piece of sari, and his dad magically moved him to a doorstep near a river. The parents then returned to prison, and the demon brother couldn’t find baby Krishna, who grew up and eventually rescued his parents from prison. Kabir wants to do the same thing: find a way to get out of prison and free Amma too.

Mouse Girl thinks being rich would be better than being good, and she wants to know what the other women did to get incarcerated. This isn’t a topic they discuss. Kabir suspects that Aunty Cloud is innocent like Amma is, though he thinks that Grandma Knife and Mouse Girl likely aren’t. Amma was raised in an orphanage and then did housework for a wealthy family, where she met Appa. Amma is Hindu and Appa is Muslim, so they got married secretly to avoid criticism from Appa’s parents or other people. A guest of the wealthy family claimed that Amma stole a diamond necklace from her, so Amma went to prison. She couldn’t afford bail or a lawyer for a trial, and because she was low caste, the police didn’t care much whether she was guilty, so they just left her in prison. Amma says Kabir gives her hope.

Aunty Cloud asks Kabir to sing, in order to distract them from the heat so that they can sleep. He chooses a song by Saint Kabir, whom both Muslims and Hindus respect and whom Kabir was named after. Amma taught Saint Kabir’s songs, which are in Hindi, to Kabir. Tamil is the language spoken locally in the city of Chennai and the state of Tamil Nadu. Kabir also speaks Kannada, which is the language spoken where Amma and Appa both grew up, in the state of Karnataka. In this prison, Amma and Kabir use Kannada like a secret language because no one else here speaks it.

Kabir and Amma never get visitors anymore. Appa used to visit when Kabir was a baby, but he moved back to Bengaluru in Karnataka, where he’s from and where his parents live, because he didn’t want to continue working for the family responsible for Amma’s incarceration. He never told his parents about Amma or Kabir. After a while in Bengaluru, he moved to Dubai for a better-paying job, hoping to make enough to hire a lawyer and free Amma and Kabir. However, he then stopped writing letters, and neither Kabir nor Amma knows why. Kabir hopes the reason is that he’s too busy making a fortune and not that he doesn’t love them anymore. The only person in Kabir’s cell who has visitors is Aunty Cloud.

The nicest place in the prison is the schoolroom, and to get there, Kabir gets to walk outside with his friend Malli, a five-year-old girl. They hear a sound that indicates someone is being punished, and they hurry along so that they won’t be late to prison school. Their teacher, Bedi Ma’am, is nice, so they both enjoy school. However, when Kabir was younger, a mean teacher was there who encouraged bullying, so he didn't like it and even begged Amma not to make him go back. Amma and Grandma Knife both insisted that he needed to learn so that he could function in the outside world upon his release from prison.

Bedi Ma’am wishes Kabir a happy late birthday and gives him some jasmine flowers, which he associates with her because she often wears them in her hair. Unlike the old teacher, Bedi Ma’am discourages bullies and sticks up for children who are being bullied; therefore, Kabir feels safe and happy with her. The other kids include an unnamed baby; Chandar, a three-year-old boy; and two boys named Srikant and Shyram, who are around six and fight each other constantly. Malli and Kabir work on a puzzle of the world.

Bedi Ma’am gives the children sweets for Kabir’s birthday and then sends the others off to play and gives Kabir a special extra treat called a laddu. She tells him that their new warden plans to make him leave the prison by the end of the week because he’s too old to live there any longer. He technically should have been gone already, but the old warden either didn’t care or didn’t notice.

At first, Kabir is overjoyed because he thinks he’s finally getting out of the prison with Amma. However, Bedi Ma’am clarifies that the prison officials are releasing only Kabir, not Amma. Kabir says he doesn’t want to leave alone, but Bedi Ma’am says he doesn’t have a choice. The authorities are now attempting to find Kabir’s relatives so that he can hopefully go live with one of them and not at an orphanage.

Bedi Ma’am offers to let Kabir hold a dead butterfly that he nursed last year when it was injured. Bedi Ma’am pointed out then that the butterfly’s last deed was to visit the kids, perhaps to teach them that life can be colorful and beautiful. Bedi Ma’am taught them about how caterpillars rest in protective cocoons and then one day emerge as butterflies, having transformed all by themselves.

Amma is crying when Kabir returns from school to their cell, suggesting that she has already heard he’ll be leaving soon. However, she tells him it’s a good thing, because he’ll get to experience the world like he always wanted to. He says he doesn’t want to leave without her and that if they make him, he’ll just commit a crime so that they’ll send him back. Grandma Knife points out that he wouldn’t get sent to the same prison. Amma makes Kabir promise not to return to prison, either as an incarcerated person or as a visitor, once he’s out; however, she’d like him to write her letters.

Kabir wakes in the night to a mouse nibbling his foot. Grandma Knife wakes up too and grabs the rock she keeps next to her sleeping area. Typically, she kills mice with the stone and never misses, but Kabir chases the mouse back through a hole before she can smash it. She can tell he’s upset, so she tells him he’ll be okay out in the world. However, he should always think and act quickly, as he did just now to save the mouse. He might need to do the same thing to help himself or even hurt someone in self-defense. He asks if she believes he can figure out a way to free Amma, and she says he can because he’s smart. He realizes then that there’s not just two people who care about him and believe in him (Amma and Bedi Ma’am) but three: Grandma Knife is the third.

Normally, Bedi Ma’am divides her attention among all the children in the prison school, but since she got the news that Kabir will be leaving soon, she spends extra time teaching him survival skills for the outside world. She quizzes him on math and reminds him to bargain and count his change, refrain from gambling, beware of scams, and not waste money on pointless things. She’s giving a lot of good advice, but Kabir struggles to digest so much of it so fast.

Bedi Ma’am warns Kabir about policemen: They look for excuses to send low-caste boys like Kabir to prison; therefore, he must never do anything wrong. She teaches him about buses, which require tickets. Bengaluru, where his grandparents live, is accessible by bus, but Bengaluru and Chennai are fighting over water, so traveling from Chennai to Bengaluru isn’t safe. Bedi Ma’am shows Kabir a photograph of Juma Masjid, the mosque where Appa worshiped in Bengaluru.

Kabir’s friend Malli is angry that he’s leaving. She doesn’t understand that he has no choice, so she feels like he’s abandoning her. She won’t speak to him for a few hours, and she’s also mad that Bedi Ma’am is ignoring her, too focused on educating Kabir.

Bedi Ma’am tells Kabir that the authorities have found an uncle of his: Kabir’s father’s cousin. He lives nearby, in Chennai. Bedi Ma’am thinks this is good news because it means that Kabir can go live with family and not at an orphanage.

Back in the cell, Kabir tells Amma about his uncle, using Kannada, a language no one else there understands. Kabir wants to know why he can’t go live with his father instead of an uncle whom neither he nor Amma has ever met or heard about before. Amma says that Appa lives in Dubai, which is too far away. Uncle, on the other hand, works for the same family Amma and Appa used to work for and lives close by. Kabir doesn’t want to be around the family responsible for Amma’s incarceration and can’t believe she’s not angry about any of this. Amma says that Uncle is being kind by taking Kabir into his “home.” Kabir replies that his home is in the prison with Amma; she says that this is prison and emphasizes that Kabir can’t tell anyone he was born here or has been here, or they’ll reject him. Although no one else in the cell speaks Kannada, they can all tell that Kabir is upset, and they comfort him.