Jay's life falls apart when her husband is asked to leave his job while allegations of business malpractice are investigated against him. Jaya, a failed writer, is haunted by memories of the past after her familiar existence has called her husband's reputation into question and their future as a family in jeopardy. Disagreements with her husband, frustrations in their seventeen-year marriage, disappointment in her two teenage children, her childhood claustrophobia, and so on all begin to surface. In her small suburban Bombay flat, Jaya grapples with these and other truths about herself and mdash; among them her failure at writing and her fear of anger. Shashi Deshpande portrays a woman attempting to break a "long silence" that began when she was a child.