The Immigrant Wife

The Immigrant Wife: A Spiritual Journey

Sixteen-year-old gifted SHANTI is desperate to attend Shantiniketan -- the art school of her dreams. But her father, BUBB wants her to marry a boy of his choice. Kamal’s doting mother, MAJI, her older brother GAURAV and happy-go-lucky sister, GANGA persuade Bubb to let Kamal fulfill her desire. Before he agrees a rejection letter from Shantiniketan changes her fate.
At the Delhi University Shanti befriends LILA and HEMA and in the art department learns tools and techniques. In four years of college she hones her skill and learns art demands passion and grinding work. Two tragedies make Shanti aware of the fleeting nature of life. She weaves her pain and sorrow in her compositions. Creativity strengthens her determination to become even better than what the college has taught her.
Shanti returns home. Maji has a houseguest for summer named SATYAVAN. He has a teaching job at the Kashmir University. Before he moves out Kamal realizes she is in love with him. Soon she discovers he loves her too.
Shanti has her first person show to successful sales and excellent reviews. Satyavan goes home to Madras to see his sick father. Something has shifted in him. Yet they marry and have two children, a daughter NALINI and son AMRIT. Shanti’s time is devoted to raising the young family.
Satyavan is preoccupied with his teaching, research, writing and related academic work Satyavan is clueless about Shanti’s work. Still dissatisfied with his position at the university, Satyavan immigrate to the United States. He finds a teaching job at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania that has potential for growth. Reluctantly and to keep her family together, Shanti follows her husband to the new country.
While Satyavan gets busier than before and children slowly adapt to the new culture, Kamal struggles to get back to painting. She is in the middle of creating enough paintings for her one-person exhibition when her brother dies in an accident.
A feeling of emptiness creeps in. Upon her return from her brother’s cremation, Shanti paints frantically. Painting helps her externalize her emotions, helps her heal. She organizes a show of her paintings. Satyavan, indifferent towards her work, lest she become independent and leaves him, is conspicuously missing on the opening night of her show.
Shanti gets an opportunity to teach art to college students for a semester aboard a ship. She accepts the job even though she knows it would intensify her marital strife. While exploring the outer world as she excavates the inner, Shanti experiences spirituality in spurts.
Nalini dies in an accident. The sudden shock emotionally paralyzes Shanti. When she finally revives from the cloud of her traumatic experience she discovers that the flow of her creativity has transcended to a level that is beyond pleasure and pain, life and death. She realizes that true companion in life one’s own Self within.