Like any “good Indian girl,” Aradhana is expected to get an education and settle down with a “good Indian boy.” Like any young girl though, Aradhana has her own lofty plans. She follows a forbidden love to a land she has only known through movies and sitcoms, the United States.
Her life in the country is surreal from the first day she steps off the plane. Fate deals her a challenging hand. A smitten Irish Catholic boy, rejection, and mediocrity are just some of the issues that confront her as she pursues her education. When she hits rock bottom, she finds that she’s not only fallen from grace, but she’s lost her own sense of self worth along the way.
Back home in India, both Aradhana’s mother, Gauri, and older sister, Aasma, struggle with proper Indian marriages that are not all they seem. Driven by destiny, Aasma and Gauri find themselves in America visiting Aradhana as she embarks on a new life journey. Like Aradhana, they do not anticipate how events that transpire in this foreign land will change their lives forever. Split between the decisions they have to make and the two different cultures, they all find courage and strength within themselves and each other.
Split explores the schism between traditional and modern, ethnicity and assimilation, and duty and passion through the eyes of a young woman transitioning from challenging paradoxes in her culture to a global citizen at the dawn of the 21st century.
