Amita TrasiBesprekingen

This is a hard book to review. The subject matter is a difficult one, and Trasi approaches it with compassion and empathy. The story is told from two points of view at two different points in time. The first is Tara, the daughter of a family who rescues children in India. The second is Mukta, one of the children who is rescued. Mukta, as a child, is initiated as a temple prostitute and destined to be a sex worker. Once rescued, she is kidnapped from Tara's family home. As an adult, Tara discovers that her late father had spent the rest of his life searching for Mukta even after moving to America, and decides to return to India to continue the search.

The story weaves through time. Part of the story takes place while Tara and Mukta are children. Part of the story takes place while they are adults and remembering the past.

The shifting timelines and POV added an extra layer of suspense and mystery to the story, since it became clear that there was more going on than immediately apparent.

A compelling story of a not-so-nice part of India's culture.

Review copy courtesy of the publisher via Netgalley

This novel is a female version of The Kite Runner set in India; it focuses on the friendship between two girls, Mukta and Tara. Mukta is the Hassan character and Tara is Amir in Khaled Hosseini’s novel.

Born to a temple prostitute, Mukta is intended to follow her mother’s profession, but she is rescued and moves into an upper-class household with a daughter Tara who is two years younger than Mukta. The two girls develop a strong bond over five years. Then, when Mukta is fifteen, she is kidnapped and Tara moves to the U.S. with her father. Eleven years later, Tara returns to India determined to find her childhood friend.

Chapters alternate between the two girls. Mukta narrates the past, beginning in 1986 when she is living with her mother and grandmother in a village which adheres to the Devadasi tradition, which “dedicates” girls to a life of sex work in the name of religion. Tara narrates the present, beginning in 2004 when she comes to India to begin her search. Eventually the two plotlines converge.

The plot is fairly predictable. What is intended to be a twist is not really one because Mukta’s description of past events clearly foreshadows the revelation, especially when coupled with Tara’s description of her father’s actions. I was also not surprised by the romance element or the rather melodramatic ending.

Tara is not a character with whom I could connect. She comes across as self-centred; her search for Mukta is not so much motivated by love as by guilt and a need for redemption. The constant repetition of her feelings of guilt becomes tiresome, especially when it is obvious almost from the beginning that she is not responsible for Mukta’s fate. Tara certainly does not seem deserving of Mukta’s trust and loyalty.

Mukta is the one who possesses all the positive traits. She is humble and kind and unfailingly loyal. Obviously, her tendency to almost deify Tara stems from Mukta’s low self-esteem. Despite Tara’s mistreatment of her, Mukta focuses on Tara as her saviour. Considering all that Mukta experiences, she forgives easily and always remains optimistic. In fact, she becomes almost unbelievable in her goodness.

Another issue with characterization is that secondary characters are often just dropped from the narrative with no explanation. Once they have served their purpose, they are simply dismissed. For instance, Madam shows herself to be very determined to keep her property, but we are supposed to believe that she will not pursue Mukta or Asha? A grandmother appears for a chapter and then, for all intents and purposes, disappears?

I learned a lot more about India’s caste system, especially the Devadasi tradition. I was inspired to do further research and discovered the impact of British rule: traditionally Devadasis were celibate but the loss of their means of support and patronage when kings, the patrons of temples, lost their power forced them to become temple prostitutes. Colonialism has been such a scourge for so many!

This was an audiobook for me, and I must admit it was an enjoyable companion on morning walks. I was sufficiently interested to keep listening, though it is predictable and not without its flaws. Definitely, on the escapist/interpretive spectrum, it is much closer to escapist literature.

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I don't know why I always seem to like books that take place in India. This one was good but not great. I usually like it when a book takes forever to tell a story, but not this time. I thought this book could've been 200 pages shorter.

What a sad, yet uplifting book. The subject matter is horrifying; young girls forced into prostitution. It's also a tale of friendship and forgiveness. A little slow at times but ultimately worth reading.

This book is absolutely beautiful. Tragic, heart breaking, difficult, but beautiful. I started reading it one Saturday morning and could not stop until it was done.

Excellent book about sex trafficking and child prostitution in India.

I’d give it 7 stars! Loved it!

Interesting tale of India's culture. The two women, friends as young girls are separated to lead vastly different lives. The story is told with two different voices - the more privileged woman, returning eleven years later to try to locate the other woman, a temple prostitute. The author describes human trafficking in all it's brutality, but this serves to add considerable reality to the story. Somewhat jumpy, as it is told thro two voices in two different time periods, but well worth the time with it.

Mumbai in the 1980's was still such an unprogressive place where prostitution was prevelant , women are kidnapped and sold and even as children raised to be prostitutes for a goddess temple. Hard to believe but this novel shows this to be the case. We see two girls with different upbringings. Tara has a family and a stable life in Mumbai while Mukta is raised as a lower caste in a village. Tara's father brings Mukta home to save her from a life of prostitution and raises her with his daughter although they are not treated the same. Tara goes to school, Mukta cleans the house. This is normal. Everything changes when Tara's mother is killed in a bomb explosion and in grief Tara lashes out at Mukta arranging her kidnapping. As an adult Tara is on a quest to find Mukta.
Learned so much about Indian culture in the modern age. Quite unbelievable.½

Mumbai in the 1980's was still such an unprogressive place where prostitution was prevelant , women are kidnapped and sold and even as children raised to be prostitutes for a goddess temple. Hard to believe but this novel shows this to be the case. We see two girls with different upbringings. Tara has a family and a stable life in Mumbai while Mukta is raised as a lower caste in a village. Tara's father brings Mukta home to save her from a life of prostitution and raises her with his daughter although they are not treated the same. Tara goes to school, Mukta cleans the house. This is normal. Everything changes when Tara's mother is killed in a bomb explosion and in grief Tara lashes out at Mukta arranging her kidnapping. As an adult Tara is on a quest to find Mukta.
Learned so much about Indian culture in the modern age. Quite unbelievable.½

The time has come for young Mukta to fulfil her destiny of becoming a temple prostitute. It's what happens when you're from the lower caste of Yellamma cult of temple prostitutes. Mutka's mother wants desperately for her to have a better life. Eventually she ends up in a foster family in Bombay where she becomes friends with eight-year-old Tara, the tomboyish daughter of the family. Mukta treasures their friendship and when she is kidnapped one night in Tara's bedroom, she knows that Tara will find her.

Eleven years after the kidnapping, Tara is still blaming herself for what happened. But she will not give up searching for her long-lost friend and she will uncover some interesting secrets along the way.

I thought this was going to be a solid read filled with strong characters. But I was wrong. I feel bad because this covers a serious topic - human trafficking - but from cover to cover this was boring. I can't believe I read every page until 43% when the idea finally came to me to skim the rest. I feel as though it wasn't fully developed and didn't live up to its potential. Some things were convenient and predictable. A disappointing read for sure.

The Color of Our Sky takes place in India between 1986 and 2008. It follows two characters, girls of about the same age, Tara and Mukta. Tara has a good father and mother and lives in Mumbai while Mukta lives with her grandmother and mother in a small village called Ganipur.

Tara's father is a good man, he has dedicated his adult life to helping street children. Mukta's situation is quite different. She comes from a long line of devdasis, the practice of a cult that dedicates their daughters to the Goddess Yellamma. Mukta didn't understand her body didn't belong to her until she was about thirteen and taken from her family to serve as a prostitute, as her mother and grandmother had before her.

Tara's father was also from Ganipur and on one of his trips to see his mother, he is made aware of Mukta and with misgiving, takes her back to Mumbai and to his home. Tara and Mukta become the best of friends although Mukta works as a servant in their home.

Unexplainably, after several years, Mukta disappears one night after they have all gone to bed. Tara's mother has died, and Tara's father eventually decides to leave India and he and Tara immigrate to America. After his death, and 11 years after Mukta has disappeared, Tara returns to India determined to find her lost friend. The search, the reason for Mukta's disappearance and her life during those 11 years are the heart of the book.

The author, Amita Trasi, is Indian and from Mumbai, but currently living in Houston. This is her first novel but it seems written by a more experienced writer. Unfortunately I didn't think the last part of the book was as strong as the first and both the characters and the plot suffered. Still, I thought it was fascinating and well worth reading. Trasi is a writer I'll follow.

THE COLOR OF OUR SKY by Amita Trasi
A bit slow to start but the plot picks up around 100 pages and then moves quickly.
In 1980’s India, a young rural girl with a devastating background is rescued by a Mumbai businessman. She becomes an unpaid servant in his family and best friend to his daughter who is about the same age. Mukta lives with the family until shortly after the mother in the family dies. Mukta is kidnapped and cannot be found. Years later the daughter begins a search for her long lost friend and servant.
The characters seem to change quite a bit with time; the daughter especially wavers in characterization. The very slow start makes this novel difficult to stick with, but the last half of the book presents an intriguing mystery. Stick with it and you do get a rich reward.
Book groups will find themselves presented with unpaid servants, unknown relatives, mysterious happenings, uncaring and ineffective police, aid organizations stymied in their attempts to help and an unflattering look at life in India.
3 of 5 stars

This was a very easy to read book about a very difficult subject. The writer kept me interested even though I figured out various connections and answers before they were written. I had a lump in my throat for much of the second half of the book and found it unsettling that there was so much prostitution and sex trafficking involving such young girls. Truly a heartbreaking read when you learn that for some lower caste women and girls who are "temple" prostitutes this was an acceptable and traditional way of life. Truly disheartening when it's so accepted by the men, especially with the children. Here such men would be called pedophiles while in India it was so readily accepted. I was happy to read about the guilt felt by two of the older males characters rather than think their actions meant nothing to them. The characters and this story will remain with me for a long time. I understood Tara but my heart went out to Mukta and hope there will be a follow-up to this book.

A wonderful story of class and culture in India. I always learn something new each time I read fiction from India. The Color Of The Sky taught me about yet another chapter in the history of the great country of India. I loved this book and highly recommend it!

The Color of Our Sky is a fictionalized portrait of India’s devdasis – servants of god. They are lower caste women who, from a prepubescent age, serve as prostitutes in the name of god. Traditionally it was a revered position. Today, these women are shunned by the culture that created them. The plight of these women is fraught with abuse and murder, and is ripe with opportunities for child trafficking.

Trasi handles her subject matter with the care and passion it deserves and clearly has skill for her craft. I liked her writing style, yet two things kept gnawing away at me as I read her novel. First, she has the tendency to get carried away with her prose, rendering it overtly melodramatic. Second, despite all thematic twists and turns, the ending was easy to predict. How Trasi deals with this in her future work will ultimately define her writing as genre fiction or literary fiction, both valid forms of fiction. A praiseworthy debut novel.

This is a book that covers a topic that is not easy to navigate – sex trafficking. Actually it deals with two difficult topics as it also delves into the caste system in India but not as deeply as it does with prostitution. There are moments of joy, lightness and happiness but this is a book that will stay with you. The images brought to mind while reading are not easy to forget.

Tara is a young girl in a happy household; her father is a progressive thinker who works with NGOs to help children of lower castes. Usually he brings them home for just a couple of days and then they go on to be placed. But one day he brings home a young girl named Mukta and she stays with the family. Mukta is the child of a small town prostitute, part of a generational system of women “dedicated to the goddess” but who are really just kept for the upper caste men. Mukta’s mother wants her to avoid her fate but her grandmother is a mercenary woman and sells her at 8 years old into the system.

Tara’s father is from the same village and on a trip home his mother encourages him to take her and find her a new home for no child deserves such a fate. He brings her home but his wife is not happy. Tara ultimately befriends her and they form a bond that holds firm until one night it breaks.

Mukta is kidnapped from the house one night and Tara is to scared to react. After trying to find her without luck Tara and her father move to the US. After Tara’s father dies she returns to India to try and find Mukta. Tara feels compelled to search for her childhood friend for many reasons and she won’t stop until she finds her.

The book is told in both girls’ voices and moves somewhat confusingly in time. Tara is, for the most part, a very unlikable character. She is at times an unpleasant child and to put it bluntly a pushy and stupid adult. Mukta has the far more compelling story and despite her very hard life she is easier to like. It is awful to read what her life was like but it’s important to bring awareness to these situations. For that alone this book should be read. It’s not a perfect book by any means but it is one that keeps a reader’s interest and has several big twists that caught me by surprise.

4.5 Stars
Moving...and thought-provoking. One part historical novel, one part current social issue book, that focuses on the underworld of India and the epidemic of sex-trafficking. The setting is vividly described and the story revolves around two women, their friendship, and the hope that will not be extinguished. Recommended.

LT Early Reviewer½

I loved this book! Having been to India, the setting was near and dear to my heart, and I could easily picture the places the author described. I liked her use of Hindi words for things, I felt it immersed the reader in the characters' world. The dictionary in the back was helpful, too. While the world in India felt real, Tara's life in San Francisco seemed surreal to me.

This is the story of an upper caste Indian girl, Tara, and the lower caste girl, Mukta, who comes to live with her and her family. Mukta is treated as a servant by the adults, but to Tara she is more a friend and playmate. When tragedy strikes, Mukta is kidnapped before Tara's eyes. Tara and her father move to the United States, but they never stop searching for Mukta.

The topic of child prostitution and sex trade is not an easy one and I believe the author was able to discuss it without being crude. I also through the author did a good job of sharing Tara's guilt: how awful it must truly feel to believe you condemned someone, as close to you as a sister, to that kind of life.

I felt that some of Tara's chapters were repetitive, but then so was her search. The cheesiest thing was when the book made an appearance within itself near the end. To me it seemed like the author was making light of everything; like the story wasn't real and Tara and Mukta weren't really struggling to find each other. Or maybe it was just that it caused this reader to come crashing back to her real world; that the sounds and smells of India drifted back into memory.

I would give this book more stars, because it was well written and I stayed up until 0200 to finish it so that must count for something, But it was not particularly enjoyable. Sex-slavery in India storyline aside, I seriously disliked Tara and her constant all-consuming self-centered behavior. The appalling attitudes of her parents toward Mukta weren't conducive to sympathy either. The father wants to think of himself as a wonderful, open-minded guy who believes the caste system is unfair, and spends his life helping orphans. Except for Mukta, who he has reason to suspect may his own daughter from his affair with the village prostitute. What a hypocrite.½

This story was an in depth look at the tragedy of child prostitution in India told through the alternating views of Tara, a well off happy child of upper caste Indians, and Mukta, born into a low caste family and destined to become a temple prostitute at the tender age of 10 years old. The subject matter was difficult to read, but was relieved somewhat by the brief happiness granted to Mukta during her stay with Tara and her family. The writing was somewhat uneven so that sometimes I felt drawn into the story and sometimes I felt that parts of it were contrived and a little too pat, especially when the author portrayed Mukta as so accepting of her fate after she had experienced a better life. This may be due to my having so little experience with the futility of fighting against the caste system. I commend the author for tackling such a painful and horrific subject that often goes under the radar and seems to be ingrained in caste and religious norms with the police often in collusion with the practice. Thank goodness the author emphasizes there are many NGO's trying to change the lives of these girls.

I received this book as part of LT early reviewers giveaway.

This is a not an easy book to review as it deals with a hard topic of temple dancers (or Devdasis) which is really sex trafficking at it's core.

This book is very well written and reminds me of the work by Shilpi Soumya Gowda and Khaled Hosseini. The is a story of love, of friendship, and of redemption.

Highly recommended

I found getting into this book to be slow, but about a third of the way through it really picked up and I was totally engaged. If I remember correctly, the writing seemed stilted in the early chapters but became very fluid as it progressed. I have always found myself attracted to books about India and this one showed a side of that country that I had not been introduced to before. While the subject matter is extremely painful, the book overall celebrated the strength of the human spirit.

I had a hard time reading this book and put it away several times. The writing is solid, and I connected with the characters, but some of the subject matter is very heavy to get through, and the overall storyline is sad. I usually read to be uplifted, inspired, and absorbed--not to say there weren't inspiring facets to this story--but I could only take the heaviness in short increments. I did like the alternating viewpoints, connecting mostly with Mukata, and enjoyed the mystery and human internal strength aspect.

I suppose I'd recommend this to those who enjoy deeply emotional, tragic stories, but as for myself, I prefer a lighter, less distressing read.

Thank you to LibraryThing for my complimentary copy.

A special thank you to Edelweiss and William Morrow for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Did I just read that correctly, that this is a debut novel? Seriously? Outstanding. This is an emotional story of two childhood friends—one a victim of the human slave trade, the other on a mission to save her after she is kidnapped from the room they share.

In 1996, Mukta at the age of ten has come of age to become a prostitute like her mother and grandmother. In an effort to escape her fate, she is sent to be a house girl for a family in Mumbai. There she forms a strong bond with Tara, the eight-year-old daughter of the family and the girls become like sisters.

One fateful night in 1993, Mutka is kidnapped from the room she shares with Tara and disappears. Tara ends up in America but never recovers from losing her best friend and cannot settle in LA. She blames herself for Mukta's kidnapping and embarks on a journey to bring her home. What she is not prepared for are the secrets that are uncovered about her own family along the way.

For fans of Khaled Hosseini, Nadia Hashimi, and Shilpi Somaya Gowda, you will not be disappointed that you picked up this book, you will be disappointed when you finish it.