The family receives flattering marriage proposals and the IAS probationer marries a city-bred girl above his status.
The bewildered patriarch seeks consolation in stoic acceptance of these changes, ruminating over the younger generation's break for independence on his walks with a friend who waits for his America-based son.
The youngest son, the rebel whose passion is cricket, not only manages to get a first class but shames the IAS brother into financing his higher studies in Delhi.
It is the timid third son whose second division in the all-important exam strands him in the backwaters of mediocrity, with a sense of being a failure and conscious of his father's disappointment.
The gentleness of the unfolding and the contemplative insights offered into each individual's feelings and motives, the naturalistic mise-en-scene enveloped in shadowy sepia tones imbue a familiar, ordinary tale of Indian life with melancholy poetry.