[1]The following is an edited excerpt of an article in INDIA New England.
Meghna Damani, a 32-year-old Mumbai native who in India had her own career as a model and a newspaper writer, never thought much about money, but now she found herself the dependent wife of an H-1B visa holder - not allowed to work or even open her own bank account - under her visa status.
"I just wanted to end it all, just to die," she says in her recently released documentary -the first film to address the struggles of H-4 visa holders, dependent wives who cannot work in the United States, often despite their advanced degrees.
Damani, who lives in New Jersey, found a new purpose for her life when she decided to make a documentary about other women who were in the same situation. She posted ads and waited to meet with women. She enrolled in film school.
Eventually, though, as several other women became concerned about how being in the film would affect their green card application process - the film, entitled "Hearts Suspended," turned into a story partly about her own life in America.
The 24-minute documentary was screened at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., on April 1, 2008, during a conference on immigration and gender.
People who attended the screening included a group from the women's support organization, Saheli. It was the first time the film was shown in New England.
"I think the film is really great to challenge some of the stereotypes out there," said Huong Nguyen, who teaches a graduate course on immigration at Brandeis.
Nguyen asked Damani about buying or leasing "Hearts Suspended" to show to her students in class.
"There are films that deal with undocumented workers, but [this is the first film I saw] that deals with South Asians," she said.
Brandeis student Lila Starbuck, 21, said she liked the film because it illustrated the interconnectedness between immigration law and interpersonal relationships.
"It was very interesting [to see] the psychological side of it," she said. "How both people were torn. There was nothing wrong with their marriage, but they were having problems because of the system."
In the documentary, Damani looks for jobs on the Internet all the time, but with no success. Once, an employer invites her in for an interview, but soon after learning that she needs sponsorship, dismisses her.
Eventually, she has to go on medication for depression and her mental state begins to affect her relationship with her husband.
"I came to think he was embarrassed to talk about me," she says in the film. Ashamed about being unemployed, Damani begins to think that every time someone would ask her husband about her, he would change the subject.
Another cause of tension for the couple is the money in the family's bank account, which Damani realizes is not her own, but her husband's. Once, when she wanted to go on an expensive trip, her husband did not consent.
Shivali Shah, an immigration attorney who is interviewed in the film and who also attended the screening at Brandeis, said U.S. immigration law forces a woman "to go from being an independent human being to being basically a child" who has to ask the husband every time she wants something.
According to Brandeis graduate student Urjasi Rudra, more than 97,000 women entered the United States in 2005 with H-4 visas. Of them, every year between 30 and 50 percent are Indian nationals, said Shah.
Information about "Hearts Suspended," which has screened at several South Asian film festivals, is on the Web at www.heartssuspended.com [2].
Source: INDIAnewEngland.com [3]
Copyright 2008 New England Ethnic News, EthnicNewz.org. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten o redistributed without the express permission of the source. Contact Newz for more information.