The color of sky

By: Amita Trasi
Location: FIC TRA
Genre: Cultural- India 

I am going to India in 12 days, I have been multiple times. I have seen things there your eyes should not see. Things that are disturbing and confrontational to humanity. Children drugged, begging. Old men digging with picks in 40degree heat when a digger is down the road idle. Disabled people, who think, desire, hope and dream- treated like animals. Yet in India I have seen so much love and compassion, care, redemption and hope.
I am looking forward to going back, but I am bracing myself for the onslaught on my senses and my heart and mind. In India you cannot be neutral and human- it is impossible.
So this book- 

A sweeping, emotional journey of two childhood friends—one struggling to survive the human slave trade and the other on a mission to save her—two girls whose lives converge only to change one fateful night in 1993.

India, 1986: Mukta, a ten-year-old girl from the lower caste Yellamma cult of temple prostitutes has come of age to fulfill her destiny of becoming a temple prostitute. In an attempt to escape this legacy that binds her, Mukta is transported to a foster family in Bombay. There she discovers a friend in the high spirited eight-year-old Tara, the tomboyish daughter of the family, who helps her recover from the wounds of her past. Tara introduces Mukta to a different world—ice cream and sweets, poems and stories, and a friendship the likes of which she has never experienced before.As time goes by, their bond grows to be as strong as that between sisters. In 1993, Mukta is kidnapped from Tara’s room.

Eleven years later, Tara who blames herself for what happened, embarks on an emotional journey to search for the kidnapped Mukta only to uncover long buried secrets in her own family.
Moving from a remote village in India to the bustling metropolis of Bombay, to Los Angeles and back again, amidst the brutal world of human trafficking, this is a heartbreaking and beautiful portrait of an unlikely friendship—a story of love, betrayal, and redemption—which ultimately withstands the true test of time.

“Sometimes one act of bravery is better than a life lived as a coward.
-Mukta”
― Amita Trasi, The Color of our Sky