Tracing the destiny of Kapila, an outcast child who had been deemed by his fellow villagers to have supernatural powers of destruction, because of the timing of his solar eclipse birth. As a result, Kapila rides through his alienating adolescence and tumultuous adulthood while constantly having to come to terms with the fact that everyone in his former native Madagascan village--his father foremost--wished his immediate death, upon his being born. As a newborn infant, he had been put in a cattle pen to be trampled to death--the traditional way superstitious vilagers get rid of babies born during this astronomical alignment. The baby was rescued by a brave girl, Raivo, who relocated to another village and raised him as her own child. Named Kapila (cripple) because of the leg injury sustained in the cattle pen, of which he only has a vague memory, the misanthropic child matures into outcast teen who must learn to rise above his stigma-- and face his own demons by returning to his native village.