A working-class leader confronts a villainous factory owner, falls in love with the boss's daughter unaware of her family origins and, after many adventures and setbacks, it is revealed that the hero is in fact the official heir to the property the villain had usurped. An influential Bengali novelist acknowledging allegiance to socialism, Mitra's studio-bound film concentrates on showing the milieu of the rich while the dialogues make numerous references to the workers and the poor.

The poor but educated Mahim and his childhood friend, the rich but conservative Suresh, both fall in love with the same woman, the liberated Achala. Mahim marries her and they move to a village but she cannot forget Suresh. Her smoldering unhappiness takes the form of resentment towards the orphaned Mrinal, raised by Mahim's father, and receives a dramatic visual embodiment when their house burns down. Mahim falls ill, is rescued by Suresh, and nursed back to health by Achala. On a train (a metaphor for the irreversibly linear course of life) to a health resort where Mahim is supposed to convalesce, Suresh on a rainswept night gives in to temptation and elopes with Achala. At the end of the film, there is a dubious reconciliation as Achala is shown following Mahim's 'good' traditionalism with Sharatchandra's barely concealed hostility towards Achala's liberated Brahmo Samaj upbringing.

A naive Sanskrit poet, shunned for falling in love with a low-caste Indian woman, faces challenges after entering into a competition with a princess.