As Tamil people on the hillside celebrate the eve of their independence, a young Indian boy plots his escape to the city.

An Indian college student returns home for Diwali for the first time in two years. Upon his return, he must decide if he will please his dying father by getting married, or tell his family about his dreams to study in America.

An Indian American woman wishes to reconnect with a childhood friend, but all does not go as planned.

A Cambridge-educated writer returns to India for his brother's wedding only to develop feelings for his brother's new wife.

During World War II in West Bengal, a Bengali grandmother and doll-crafter faces the atrocities of British colonial rule. Upon delivering a magical doll to the Governor of Kolkata, the grandmother seeks justice for these colonial cruelties and the death of her grandson.

In Ceylon, colonized by the British, an Indian Tamil woman describes the events that follow the departure of the British from the plantations. She imagines the possibility of a new world as the Indians reclaim their land. However, the reality that follows shows how the British values persist and are upheld by ethnic differences between the Indians on the plantation.

During an unwanted conversation with a stranger on a train in India, a woman reflects on her loveless marriage to her husband — born of financial necessity — and her abandoned dream to attend college in America.

A depressed Indian woman trapped in a decades-long, passionless marriage recalls the one day when she truly loved her husband.

An Indian-American teenager grapples with his mother's alcoholism and the adultery of his father, who threatens to send his mother back to India.

After a terrifying illness, an Indian grandmother drops everything and moves to live with her son and his wife in California. What she finds is a family that has begun to leave behind the traditions she cherishes, and her desperate attempts to save them only intensify her suffering.