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.