By completing the three trials, Kalki is supposed to prove himself worthy of his godhood and embark on a global healing tour to connect with his devotees. Sindu’s novel starts before Kalki’s 10th birthday, which is when he is expected to complete the first trial. Kalki’s birth was prophesied by the Hindu text Sri Kalki Purana, which states he must endure three trials to mature. The book follows the child god Kalki, the final human incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, and the tests he must face to reach maturity. (Nov.Blue-Skinned Gods is the second novel written by author and UTSC creative writing professor SJ Sindu. Sindu’s stunning effort more than delivers on her initial promise. Sindu juxtaposes the closed world of the ashram with Kalki’s vibrant experiences in New York, where he performs with Lakshman’s band, the Blue-Skinned Gods eats meat and “figures out who I was and who I was going to be.” The imagery is vivid-“my body a colony of ants puttering in all directions”-and the slow-burn narrative by the end becomes incandescent. After Lakshman leaves the ashram, Kalki travels to New York City as part of a “world healing tour” conceived by Ayya to promote Kalki, where the cousins unexpectedly reunite, and Kalki learns some news that breaks his life in two. Kalki may be seen by strangers as a guru, but as a teen he is easily swayed by Ayya his cousin, Lakshman, who is his best friend and Roopa, whose condition eventually improves and with whom Kalki falls in love. After struggling to heal Roopa, a sick girl brought to the ashram, he doubts the prophecy about him. Kalki Sami has blue skin and black blood, and his father, Ayya, has built an ashram for the family to live in, where Kalki, on the eve of his 10th birthday, must undergo three tests, beginning with the performance of a miracle.
Sindu’s marvelous coming-of-age story (after Marriage of a Thousand Lies) features a young healer in Tamil Nadu, believed to be an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, who eventually breaks away from his domineering father.
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