The film revolved around women of three generations and their lives and changing position in society. And this is shown in relation to a jewellery box.<ref name="The jewellery box" /> The lead character is the matriarch of a Bengali Hindu family (Moushumi Chatterjee) of Landed gentry#India in East Bengal. She was married off in an arranged marriage at age 11, and widowed shortly thereafter. The story of the film revolves around her wedding Gemstone, which she keeps sequestered in a box. After becoming a victim of ethnic cleansing during the partition of India, her family moves to the Republic of India from East Pakistan, losing their ancestral lands in the process. She spends the remainder of her life, apparently as a chaste widow, hiding her wedding jewels from her greedy relatives in the joint family. In 1949, she befriends the new bride of the family, her niece-in-law (Konkona Sen Sharma) shortly before dying.