A film that attempts a realist idiom with a story about a lower-middle-class family. The family consists of Dinadas the father, a mother and some sons, only one of whom earns money. It opens with a series of dissolves presenting each son: one is smoking a cigar and trains for an acting career reciting Michael Madhusudhan Dutt; the next is an aspirant writer smoking a hukkah (a bubble-pipe); the third wants to be a dancer and smokes a bidi (reed). The mother complains that there is no peace in the house; the father returns from the market to find everything in a mess; the earning brother prefers to spend money buying expensive cosmetics. The story shows the rivalry with the family of Sukhadas, first over who Dinadas` only daughter will marry, and then, more seriously, over the Anglo-Indian prostitute Flora, with whom the sons of both patriarchs fall in love.