Aru Shah and the End of Time

Aru Shah and the End of Time (2018) is a fantasy novel penned by Roshani Chokshi and the first installment of the Pandava Quintet. The story follows 12-year-old Aru Shah who inadvertently freezes time by unleashing an ancient demon from a cursed lamp. She then embarks on an adventure to unfreeze time and stop the demon from awakening the god of destruction and ending all life. The book explores themes of self-discovery, truth, morality, and fate.

Chokshi is an award-winning author of Middle Grade and Young Adult fiction in the fantasy genre, including the New York Times best-selling series, The Star-Touched Queen. She was awarded the Southern Book Prize in 2020 for The Gilded Wolves (2019) and named Georgia Author of the Year in the Young Adult category in 2022 for The Bronzed Beasts (2021).

This guide is based on the 2018 Scholastic Kindle Edition.

Plot Summary

Arundhati “Aru” Shah is a 12-year-old girl who lives in the Museum of Ancient Indian Art and Culture, which is run by her mother, Krithika P. Shah, in Atlanta, Georgia. One of the museum’s artifacts is a cursed lamp. One Monday afternoon during autumn break, Aru is visited at the museum by three students from her school who accuse her of lying and pretending that her life is more extravagant than it is. A panicked Aru shows them the cursed lamp to save face and not lose popularity. On their urging, she lights the lamp, which releases the Sleeper, an ancient demon who freezes time wherever he goes and is destined to awaken Lord Shiva, the God of Destruction, who will end all time with his cosmic dance.

With her friends and mother now frozen in time, Aru is visited by a pigeon who calls himself Subalu, and Aru nicknames him “Boo.” Boo informs Aru that she is the reincarnation of one of the Pandavas, the five warrior brothers fathered by gods, from the Indian epic, the Mahabharata. They travel through a portal to meet Aru’s “sibling,” another 12-year-old girl, Yamini “Mini" Kapoor-Mercado-Lopez, yet another Pandava reincarnation. The trio travels to the Otherworld to meet the Council of Guardians, a council formed of celestial beings from the Hindu epics, to receive instructions on the girls’ quest to stop the Sleeper.

Urvashi, the celestial dancer, and Hanuman, the Monkey God, are the only two members currently in residence. A skeptical Urvashi forces the girls to prove they are Pandavas through a Claiming, and Aru and Mini are revealed to be the daughters of Indra, king of the heavens and lord of thunder, and Dharma Raja, god of justice and death, respectively. The girls receive gifts from their fathers—a golden orb for Aru and a purple compact mirror for Mini—and Urvashi details their quest: They are to collect the three keys that will enable them to enter the Kingdom of Death without actually dying. Here, they will learn how to defeat the Sleeper from the Pool of the Past and will also collect celestial weapons to fight him. They must complete their quest in nine days’ time, before the new moon, or else the Sleeper will emerge.

The girls collect the three keys—a sprig of youth, a bite of adulthood, and a sip of old age—by traveling to the locations where the keys are located, using a mehendi map that Urvashi transfers onto their hands. Time in the Otherworld moves differently, and the girls run through days in a matter of what feels like hours. Along the way, they battle a demon, collect armor from the Seasons, and come across the Sleeper himself, who is chasing the girls. He reveals that Boo is actually Shakhuni, the King of Subala, who tricked the Pandavas into losing their kingdom and eventually starting the Great War, in the original epic. He instructs the girls to bring him the weapons they collect before the new moon. If they fail, he will kill their loved ones; he kidnaps Boo as he disappears. Aru manages to free the gods’ vehicles—animals who serve as their celestial mounts—from the Sleeper’s clutches, and they promise to help her when she needs them.

Aru and Mini use the three keys to travel to the Kingdom of Death, passing a number of trials until they end up in the chamber of the astras, the celestial weapons. Inside a celestial whale shark, the girls struggle to find their way out alive, and discover that the golden orb and purple compact are actually weapons: the vajra, Indra’s lightning bolt, and the danda, Dharma Raja’s death stick. In the Pool of the Past, they learn that the Sleeper is Aru’s biological father; he was destined to become the Sleeper upon Aru coming of age. Krithika, a member of the panchakanyas, a group of legendary queens reincarnated to raise the Pandavas in each generation, was tasked with killing the Sleeper. However, unable to do so out of love for him and Aru, she imprisoned him in the lamp, and began searching for ways to free both him and Aru from the prophecy. He can only be defeated by something that is not metal, wood, stone, dry, or wet, and Aru realizes the vajra is the key.

The girls travel back to the museum and summon the Sleeper there, enlisting the help of the celestial mounts in fighting him. The Sleeper arrives with a horde of demons and an imprisoned Boo. Then, the mounts and the demons fight, as the Sleeper tries to catch the girls. Aru almost manages to strike him with the vajra; at the last minute, however, he reveals to her that if she kills him, she will alienate everyone she loves. He shows Aru a vision of herself on a battlefield surrounded by her Pandava sisters, including Mini, who is looking at Aru with intense hatred. As doubt creeps in, Aru is unable to kill the Sleeper, and he escapes. Despite this, time unfreezes, as the girls were able to stop the Sleeper from approaching Lord Shiva before the new moon.

The girls commence their training under Urvashi, Hanuman, and Boo, the latter of whom pledges his loyalty to the Pandavas as Aru insists that people can change. A new boy, Aiden Acharya, joins Aru’s school the week before Christmas break. During a training session on the last day of school, an alarm rings through the Night Bazaar in the Otherworld, and Hanuman sends the girls back home, asserting that something has been stolen from the gods. The next day, they see a wolf pacing outside Aru’s house, with a golden bow and arrow in its mouth though none of the mortals can see this. The wolf transforms into a girl before turning into a bird and flying away, and Aru notices that Aiden has seen this, too. Boo informs the girls that the wolf-girl is their sibling, and they prepare to embark on their next adventure, as the Otherworld blares its siren call for help.