So Far From India is a documentary about two worlds: the world of a recently-arrived Indian immigrant in America, and the traditional world of his new wife who waits for him in his ancestral home in India.

Ashok Sheth is one of the many Indian immigrants who work in subway newstands in New York City. His life in New York is an anonymous one, free of family obligations and demands. It is an existence in marked contrast to the world he left behind in India - a protected world, a world of arranged marriages and family rituals.

In August 1981, the film crew accompanied Ashok on his first trip back to Ahmedabad, when he returned to see his wife, Hansa, and their newly-born son.