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Will the heroine, Lata, submit to Mrs. Rupa Mehra's arrangements or will she follow her own spirit, even if that means defying not only her mother but barriers of caste and religion? Three candidates present themselves: Kabir, a cricketer, dashing but a Muslim; Amit Chatterji, a Bengali poet and novelist, sophisticated, rich, and a Brahmin; and Haresh, a brisk young man determined to make a career for himself in the shoe manufacturing industry. (Goonetilleke)
The book also covers the lives of Lata's friends and family.
...strands of marriage, friendship and coincidence bind scores of characters into a natural and esthetically pleasing whole. Savita is married to a lecturer in English literature, Pran Kapoor, the son of a government minister, Mahesh Kapoor, author of an act designed to give India's landless peasants their own farms. Kapoor's other son, Maan, witnesses the abject poverty of such people when he settles for a few weeks in a remote vilalge (he has been banished there on the whim of his lover, Saeeda Bai). And buried within Maan's story is the sad tale of Kacheru, a desperately poor laborer who ends up utterly ruined. (Bemrose)