November 1984. In Allahabad, a sacred city and a cradle of the Independence Movement just like the rest of India, the people mourn the assassination of Indira Gandhi which occurred just a few days earlier.

This national tragedy places Gunga, a young affluent woman from Bombay, in a dramatic situation as she is violently severed from the rosy illusion-filled universe of her childhood. She visits her grandmother, Nanima, to announce news that may decisively affect her own future and that of her family.

Rebellious yet vulnerable, Gunga works as a journalist and has entered into a romantic relationship with a married man who is significantly older than her, defying the hypocritical puritanism of her family environment and breaking the traditional taboos associated with a woman's position in India.

Nonetheless, it will take an entire week for her to find the courage to confess to Nanima the truth about herself and her mother.

This is a harsh yet deeply humane story of three women, each representing a different generation, and the inevitable conflict between their destinies, set against the social paradoxes of a country that remains shackled by its heavy national heritage and traditions while being inevitably swept up by the spirit of evolution and modernization.