Hello friends! What’s the last book you read set in your home country? I had the opportunity to review Blue Skinned Gods by S. J. Sidhu through The Nerd Daily and I am very excited to bring this book which is set in India to your notice. Blue Skinned Gods is a thought-provoking book about faith and belief, the lengths that we go to and reasons we use to justify our actions that control someone who does not know any better. This was a hard read for me at times and I encourage you to check the content notes before reading the book. If you have travelled to or lived in India or any place where Hinduism is practiced, like Sri Lanka, your prior knowledge will come in very handy, mine sure did! Let’s take a look at the synopsis and content notes, then dive into my thoughts.
From the award-winning author of Marriage of a Thousand Lies comes a brilliantly written, globe-spanning novel about identity, faith, family, and sexuality.
In Tamil Nadu, India, a boy is born with blue skin. His father sets up an ashram, and the family makes a living off of the pilgrims who seek the child’s blessings and miracles, believing young Kalki to be the tenth human incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. In Kalki’s tenth year, he is confronted with three trials that will test his power and prove his divine status and, his father tells him, spread his fame worldwide. While he seems to pass them, Kalki begins to question his divinity.
Over the next decade, his family unravels, and every relationship he relied on—father, mother, aunt, uncle, cousin—starts falling apart. Traveling from India to the underground rock scene of New York City, Blue-Skinned Gods explores ethnic, gender, and sexual identities, and spans continents and faiths, in an expansive and heartfelt look at the need for belief in our globally interconnected world.
Content Notes: Depiction of suicide, domestic violence and abuse, transphobia, extra marital affair.
Thoughts on Blue Skinned Gods
Blue Skinned Gods introduces us to Kalki, a ten year old boy who is believed to be the tenth and final reincarnation of the Hindu god, Vishu. There are old texts that have prophesied his birth and now that he is here, he must pass some tests to prove he is truly who everyone thinks he is. His skin is blue in color and that seems like a definite sign of his divinity. In an ashram in Tamil Nadu, his parents and aunt and uncle host devotees from around the world who have some to see him and get his help in healing themselves.
The book is divided into four parts. The first three focus on the most important people in Kalki’s life, i.e., his cousin, his mother and his father. The last part of the book is about Kalki’s personal growth and decisions for the rest of his life.
Hinduism and the worship of Vishu and his incarnations are an integral part of Kalki’s story. Homeschooled by his father and immersed in Indian sacred texts, Kalki is a wealth of knowledge on old teachings. As a blue-skinned boy who is the reincarnation of Vishnu, he does not associate much with other kids, his interactions being limited to his cousin, Lakshman, and a devotee who comes to heal and live with them, Roopa.
Kalki has grown up being told he is a god and his actions are defined by what the texts tell him is appropriate behaviour. But that does not mean that he truly sees himself as the people that he reads about. There is definitely a struggle to find out who he is and there are times when he knows he is privileged because he is a god. Like us humans, he doubts his abilities and as a young kid, he wants to be a child too. But being a god comes with its own responsibilities, and that is what made Kalki a reliable and lovable character. I spent most of the book rooting for him and wanting him to be whoever he is, god or not, to have clarity on that, and why.
Blue Skinned Gods does an amazing job at depicting the tension between belief and truth. I wondered about the effect such expectations have on a child, and it is evident where a spiral of self-doubt leads to for someone in Kalki’s shoes.
I also enjoyed the modern touch that the book has when Kalki travels to North America; it gives a good contrast to his rural upbringing in India. This will likely make the book more accessible to Western audiences. The exoticness of Blue Skinned gods as a music band, mixed with Kalki’s teachings as a guru offers an interesting backdrop for Kalki’s final steps towards the truth. He learns a lot about the teachings he has lived with and the story he has been told.
I enjoyed the twists and origin story of the young boy. It made me face my own presumptions and marvel at how reading about a culture molds the people I imagine in my head.
Reading Experience Summary
Blue Skinned Gods is a beautifully written book that made me ponder the world I live in. It is rich in Hindu culture, exposing not just its positive sides, but also its negative. I really liked the balance of information and how the main character, Kalki, questioned things as he grew older.
Growing up in India, I knew a lot of the stories and mythology references in this book and I felt the warmth that comes from feeling that one is in familiar territory. For someone who does not have the same context, the significance of the names and plot need some explaining, and the author does an outstanding job of taking that into consideration. The worldbuilding is done very well. What made it challenging was some of the incidents depicted in the book.
This book is Kakli’s quest to figure out who he is. Kalki eventually travels to North America and his experiences there contribute a lot to who he ends up becoming at the end.
Will you pick up this book?
Blue Skinned Gods is available now.
Be sure to check your local library and get this book through them so that it can reach more people!
Many thanks to the publisher via The Nerd Daily for providing me a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. This review was first posted on The Nerd Daily on October 24, 2021.
About the Author (from her website)
SJ Sindu is a Tamil diaspora author of two literary novels, two hybrid chapbooks, and a forthcoming graphic novel. Her first novel, Marriage of a Thousand Lies, won the Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award and was a Stonewall Honor Book and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Sindu’s second novel, Blue-Skinned Gods, will be published in November 2021 by Soho Press, and her graphic novel, Shakti, is forthcoming from Harper Collins. Sindu’s hybrid fiction and nonfiction chapbook, I Once Met You But You Were Dead, won the Turnbuckle Chapbook contest and was published by Split/Lip Press, and her hybrid nonfiction and poetry chapbook, Dominant Genes, won the Black River Chapbook Competition and will be published in February 2022 by Black Lawrence Press. A 2013 Lambda Literary Fellow, Sindu holds an MA in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a PhD in English and Creative Writing from Florida State University. Sindu teaches at the University of Toronto Scarborough.
Find her on Goodreads, Twitter and Instagram.
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Cover image: Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
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