Mata Naveena

Publisher Marketing: This is a novel about an Indian Hindu woman's life spanning the period from ca. 1923 to 2022 in the State of Bihar cut by the Ganges. Shashi meets Mohan in college, finally marries him and has five children, but while the family is upwardly mobile, Shashi's childhood trauma finally causes her a nervous breakdown, a condition she cannot permanently conquer until her second eldest son commits suicide. Thereafter Shashi and Mohan reconcile and decide to move to the U. S. to help their youngest daughter and her Muslim husband look after their children in DC, but soon Mohan's increasing dependence on ganja sends him into an Arizona rehab program. Upon his recovery, Mohan ultimately becomes a Buddhist monk and is sent back to Bihar to help heal a rift between Thai and Tibetan Buddhists in Bodh Gaya. After his success in that mission, he is struck and killed by a car as he is proceeding as a mendicant pilgrim to Buddha's birthplace in Nepal. Shashi comes back to cremate him in Varanasi and after healing the past with her youngest son Ramesh and his wife, she takes a pilgrimage to Tamil Nadu in honor of Mohan and her deceased son Shiva. While returning back to Varanasi to fulfill her vow to them, she stays at a Child Development Center, and as she is going to meet Ramesh et ux near her birthplace in North Bihar, she encounters an American guru whom she met at a seminar for Indian Hindus in the US and agrees to work for his movement at an ashram he has established in North Bihar. The Guru and Shashi have differences in approach there, however, and she and an ex-Peace Corps Volunteer Alan, who is working, get the Guru to cash them out from the ashram so they can set up a cooperative nearby. After inducing her son Ramesh (a skilled businessman who had taken over Mohan's commercial interests when he went to DC) to help them at the cooperative, it grows to great success, following Shashi's skillful defusing of a potential riot in the community over a local Muslim girl there who had married her Hindu childhood sweetheart. Shashi is honored on her 99th birthday with a great celebration at the cooperative and becomes India's own Mother Teresa when she is given the name Mata Naveena (meaning "a mother newly born") in front of all her family, friends, and associates there. The next morning Mata goes out to the field and mediates until Brahma brings her up to join him above.... (I don't know if this is what you want. I halso have a more detailed synopsis tied into the structure of this novel, which I can send to you electronically.)