The small town of Ismailpur suffers an apocalyptic night when a sudden riot breaks out and the town descends into anarchy. Four victims of the riots, rival to each other, take shelter in an old woman`s home. As the woman awaits her son`s arrival, conflicts break out between the four members, leading to a fateful night that none of them will forget.
When the movie opens, a woman is recalling the events that molded her perspective on the world. Years ago, her husband, a wealthy Western-educated landowner, challenged tradition by providing her with schooling, and inviting her out of the seclusion in which married women were kept, to the consternation of more conservative relatives. Meeting her husband's visiting friend from college, a leader of an economic rebellion against the British, she takes up his political cause, despite her husbands warnings. As the story progresses, the relationship between the woman and the visitor becomes more than platonic, and the political battles, pitting rich against poor and Hindu against Moslem, turn out not to be quite as simple as she had first thought.