Synopsis of Saint Padma the Whore Saint Padma the Whore is a novel about a woman’s quest for love and freedom. Rebelling against an arranged marriage in India, Padma flees her traditional Sikh family, her country and her clan to find love on her own terms. Spanning three decades, from the 1960's to the 1990's, the novel moves between India, the USA, and Saudi Arabia. It is loosely structured on the myth of Ulysses and Penelope, as a parallel as well as a contrast. While waiting for their mates, both weave tapestries, the former with yarn, and the latter with words; both long for a kind of partner that is truly an equal. Their stories serve as portraits of artists as women. Unlike Penelope, Padma is not monogamous; she does not wait patiently at home for her mate, but actively sets out on an adventure in search of him; she does not have the certainty of knowing who this Ulysses is, or whether he even exits. \tBeing the hero of her own odyssey, Padma follows Ulysses’ wake. Like Ulysses, she journeys far and wide, wandering dangerous straits as she steers her course for home; she, too, tarries in the arms of different partners in her long search for home for brief respite from her long and wearying search; like him, she is humbled at the end by her experiences, and is guided through the storms by the disembodied voice of a goddess. Padma’s search for home is a quest for the quiet center of being where the contraries meet. Caught between cultures, she negotiates the two poles of her psyche: the modern and the old, East and West, India and America, surrender and control, woman and artist, female and male, security and adventure, spirit and flesh, sainthood and whoredom. Her sainthood consists in her joyous and enthusiastic acceptance of life’s holy dualities.