On the Seashore

The central character is a woman, Rupa, born into an affluent family of professionals that gets disrupted due to the untimely death of their father from cancer. The trauma is followed by career separation of the family of three, Rupa, her brother, and her mother. Brother Asim gets a job in the USA as an IT professional. Rupa, an honors graduate in physics, goes for her master's degree in Philadelphia. Mother relocates from Bombay to her ancestral home at Calcutta. Suddenly lonely, they manage their own lives, keeping tenuous contact. Rupa finishes her master's and, while doing PhD, falls in love, gets married, and a son is born. She manages to complete the PhD, taking care of her married life, until her mother has a heart attack and she has to visit her. She cannot return as Mother is weak, and her marriage breaks down. She settles in Calcutta, but Mother dies. A lonely single mother, she returns to the USA without support or jobs and, through struggles, grows to mature womanhood. The stories develop around her personality amid a bevy of female characters and a few male characters, forming a bouquet of feminine beauty and determination. She gets back her life and love on her own terms.