The Married Woman

Calcutta, India, circa 1962: three neighboring families live in an upper-middle-class area. Gurcharan lives in a palatial home (Haveli) with his wife and two beautiful daughters, Lalita and Koel. He is retired; unable to find suitable work, he must live off his savings, and he ends up mortgaging his house with his neighbor, Navinchandra Roy, and hopes to get his daughters married within his means; there is Charu Sharma, who lives with her brother and sister-in-law, whose wealthy brother Girish lives in Britain. Finally there are the Roys: Navinchandra, a hard-nosed businessman, who will never undertake anything unless there is a high level of profit for him; his son Shekhar, whom he is grooming to succeed him; and his quiet, devout wife. Navin realizes Gurcharan's plight and offers Lalita a job at his office so the family will survive. Shekhar and Lalita are attracted to each other, but Navin does not approve, as he wants Shekhar to get married to Gayetri Tatya, the daughter of his wealthy business associate. Then chaos descends on these families when Girish returns home: he is attracted to Lalita and wants to marry her. Lalita finds out that Navin is bent on recovering his loan by evicting her family to a filthy go-down until they can find other means, and intends to build a five-star hotel. Lalita must now act quickly to get her father to return the loan amount to Navin. But how will Gurcharan get 1.50 lakhs in so short a time? Is his family destined to be evicted and face a life of destitution?