Malti Shankar lives in a fairly large house in a small town in India with her mom and dad, while her paternal uncle, Gauri Shankar, who has literally brought Malti up, lives in the house next door. Malti's marriage is being arranged with a young man named Ram G. Sharma, who lives in Bombay with his dad, Girdharilal; mom; elder brother, Shiri and his wife, Shobha; and a cricket-crazy school-going brother, Hari. The Pandit, arranging the marriage, describes the Sharma family, who originate from the nearby Bayana town, as a good family, living near the seashore, in a big building called "Bharat Mahal". The wedding party arrives, the bride and groom approve of each other, get married, and Malti re-locates to Ram's house. She is shocked and surprised to find that it is nowhere near the seashore, is a shanty room, divided two ways, and a kitchen - that is now her bedroom. Malti always had lots of space to live and grow up in, will this obscure, noisy, overcrowded, with virtually no privacy ...