All we can hope for is that sometimes our actions produce the results we intend. But what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow. Still, there is nothing more sacred than the labour of being.
Through the tale of how a devadasi's body came to be found in a well in Tanjore, Gitanjali Kolanad brings alive the milieu in which she lived. A Devadasi may have had more autonomy than many a housewife but hers was a freedom hard to envy as it also made her susceptible to exploitation. By the 1920s, in which Girl Made of Gold is set, there were attempts to outlaw the devadasi practice although, as the novel alludes to in passing, there were no alternative arrangements made for the women who were devadasis and they were left to fend for themselves neither entirely free in the emerging world nor entirely free of the old world.