The Bridge Home

The Bridge Home was published in 2019 by Indian American author Padma Venkatraman and has received extensive critical praise. The Bridge Home won the Golden Kite Award for Middle Grade Fiction and the Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature. Raised through her teens in India, Venkatraman spent her childhood caring for impoverished children like those she writes about in the novel. In addition to penning several other noteworthy books for younger readers, the author is a scientist, world traveler, and naturalized American citizen. The Bridge Home is current day, middle-grade story of two sisters who escape physical abuse by fleeing to a seaside Indian city where they form a new family with two indigent boys. As the four children constantly struggle with hunger, deprivation, prejudice, and danger, they wrestle intellectually with questions of meaningful faith, possible futures, and true family. The author includes a glossary of Indian terms at the beginning of the text. Readers should note that the conditions faced by the children are described in starkly real terms and that occurrences of childhood death are dealt with as well.

Plot Summary

The narrative takes the form of a long remembrance written by Viji, an 11-year-old Indian girl, to her older sister, Rukku, with the encouragement of Celina Aunty. Though younger, Viji serves as leader and protector for Rukku, who has an intellectual disability. Amma, the girls’ mother, strives to keep Rukku from any institutional authorities, fearing she will be taken away from the family. With Appa, their father, the girls live in a village where Viji attends school and the children have food, though there are very few amenities or luxuries.

On Viji’s 11th birthday, Amma presents her with a small coin purse containing her birthday money. Appa is characterized as frequently drunk and broke Amma’s arm the night before, and appears inebriated with apologies and gifts at the end of the day. He ends up striking his wife and both daughters. Viji senses that she and Rukku are now in store for the sort of abuse their mother receives. The next morning, she wakes Rukku, takes a few possessions in their backpacks, and leads her sister to the bus station where they board a bus for a large, unnamed seaside city.

Once at the city station, the bus driver tries to seize the girls, grabbing Viji by the arm. Rukku smacks him with her heavy wooden doll, allowing the girls to escape into the busiest street scene they have ever witnessed. Stopping at a shop for tea, they break a tea glass, but convince the angry shop owner that they can work for him to pay for the loss. They are welcomed inside his kitchen by his wife, Teashop Aunty, who, readers eventually learn, was bereaved of a daughter. At dusk, upon leaving the teashop the sisters encounter a friendly puppy whom Rukku calls Kutti. The dog instantly becomes their companion. The girls find their way to an old, abandoned bridge that runs parallel to a new, heavily traveled bridge. Living on the bridge are two homeless boys, the older Arul who is Rukku’s age and the younger Muthu. Though proclaiming possession of the bridge, they do not try to stop the girls from sleeping there.

In the morning, the children play and bathe in the polluted river that runs beneath the bridge and begin to bond. The girls return to the teashop. Though the owner does not want them around because they have a dog, Teashop Aunty brings them in the backdoor and gives a large bag of beads to Rukku, demonstrating how to string them together into necklaces. She encourages the girls to walk to the wealthier side of town to ask homeowners if they need maids. They walk to a neighborhood of gated compounds where they see a gardener tending fruit trees who chases them away. As they are leaving, the gardener throws an orange at them, which they share as if it were a feast.

Returning to the bridge, Viji and Rukku are assisted by Arul and Muthu in building a conjoining shelter. The girls practice their nightly ritual of Viji telling Rukku the same fantasy story of two princesses who live in magnificent kingdom. Muthu reveals he is listening as well and for the first time, calls Viji “big sister.”

The following morning the two older children enter a discussion of religion. Arul is a Christian who prays to “Our Father.” Viji comes from a Hindu family but cynically scoffs at both religions. They go to a junk dealer, who asks prying questions about Viji, to obtain jute sacks to gather recyclables. The boys take the girls to a massive garbage heap the call “the Himalayas.” Rukku refuses to go into the garbage and ties bead necklaces while Viji and the boys collect recyclable junk for which they are paid by the junk dealer. They acquire enough money to buy food.

The following morning the children walk to “the Blue Hills,” another trash heap that is near the ocean, where they encounter a rival group of rag picking children. After gathering trash, Muthu leads the girls to a busy beach area lined with kiosks of vendors. Rukku, who grasps at last the concept of purchasing and selling, sells several of her handtied necklaces to beach-going college girls. She buys a green balloon. Viji uses the money to buy necessities. She has enough left over that they argue about what to do with it. Muthu, Arul, and Viji engage in a philosophical argument about the virtue of planning for tomorrow. That night, Arul tells Viji of the tsunami that wiped out his village, killing everyone in his family but himself. He wonders why God left him behind.

The following day the rival trash gathering groups end up at the recycling shop and get into a dispute. Stepping outside, the junk dealer sees the two sisters and asks where they live. One of the rival children says they live on a bridge. Viji perceives this will be trouble. That night the children hear the voices of men on the bridge and flee into the night, finally finding shelter in what they discover is a cemetery.

Having lost their shelters, the next morning the children wait near a wedding temple and feast on discarded leftovers. They return to the bridge to gather things the men did not destroy. After some debate about actual and symbolic homes, they decide to move permanently to the cemetery. Along the way, Arul has them stop at a Catholic church so he can light a candle of thanks to God. Inside, they meet an older woman named Celina Aunty who invites them to come to her school for children without homes. When a priest arrives and asks if they are stealing, the children flee to the cemetery.

Since Rukku’s beads are gone, the next day the girls go to see Teashop Aunty to ask for more beads, which she gives them. They work on making bead necklaces to sell while the boys seek a new junk dealer. In the evening, they meet at the cemetery.

The children strike out to find new trash sources and end up at the compound where the gardener threw an orange at the girls. They encounter Praba, a girl their age, and her mother. Since Praba likes the puppy Kutti, her mother offers to buy the dog for a large sum of money, which the girls refuse, though they accept the offer of two of Praba’s used dresses. Rukku begins to show signs of being ill.

Monsoon season is beginning. The rains swamp the cemetery but do not impede the relentless clouds of mosquitoes that torment the children. As Rukku grows sicker, the girls sell more of her necklaces. Viji uses the money to buy cough syrup and insect repellant. The children discuss the possibility of abandoning the cemetery and asking Celina Aunty for shelter. Muthu explains that his stepbrother once sold him to a school that turned out to be a sweatshop. After the police raided it, he was sent to a shelter where he was also beaten. He ran away to the street where he was found by Arul. The boys believe schools are fronts for slavers and abusers.

With Rukku growing sicker and Muthu ill as well, Viji decides she must procure money for medicine. She takes Kutti to Praba’s house and sells him. She buys medicine for Rukku and Muthu and gives it to them, ultimately deciding that it is not helping. In the middle of the night, she and Arul take the sick children to Celina Aunty’s school and pound on the gate for help. Aunty takes them in and calls the doctor, who summons an ambulance to take them to the hospital. There, Rukku and Muthu are diagnosed with Dengue Fever. Muthu recovers enough to be moved to a different unit of the hospital. Arul, who refused to enter the school, comes back to be with the others. They buy a doll for Rukku and take it to the hospital, only to discover she died.

Viji blames herself for her sister’s death. Celina Aunty and Arul work with her to help her process her grief. Though the progression is arduous, eventually she begins to recover. Aunty takes her to a school for children with intellectual disabilities like Rukku and tells her that she may one day have the chance to work there as a teacher, fulfilling her dream. Aunty asks her to consider transferring to a boarding school that is more appropriate for her educational needs. At first, she refuses. After an encounter with her father in which she reaffirms that she was wise to run away and find a new life, Viji agrees to go to the boarding school.

Viji closes the narrative with a love letter to her deceased sister, expressing appreciation for showing her how to live in the present moment. She promises she will take her sister with her in her heart each day.