 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 for herself and Ram - be her fate for this lifetime? What will Gauri Shankar s reaction be when he finds out the reality of the Sharma family?