- Mayadevi’s London Yatra:
Mayadevi, a very strict and whimsical old woman decides to go to London to meet her eldest son who hasn't come back for forty years due to a fear of flying. She is foreboding and is feared throughout the house and the neighborhood. She starts learning English and packing for a week in London. She reaches London and is very suspicious and hateful of the English and considers anything foreign dirty. There is awkwardness in the family due to her sullen nature. But, her demeanor changes when she visits a heaven-like mall and is presented a cardigan and shawl by her English daughter-in-law. She is not as sullen as before and invites Martha to India to her funeral as a show of her acceptance.
2. Bishtupur Landing:
Neelima is a stubborn and fat daughter of a landlord. She hates studying and is obstinate to go to school and throws dramatic tantrum to get away. By seventeen, she convinces her father to let her leaver her education and be married. She is married to a respectable and educated man, but the two have to visit some relatives in a village. She behaves like a child travelling for the first time all by herself and is constantly scolded and told of to behave like a new bride. She finally begins to miss her school days when she was not humiliated like this.
3. Aunts, and their ailments:
Meera is accompanying her 3 aunts to a relative's funeral. Her aunts are quarrelsome and like to assert their authority over everything. They are dismissive of the fourth woman who is widow of a doctor for her choice of eating chicken. But as they begin discussing their ailments the 4 women become unlikely friends.
4. The Child Bride:
Mini is married off by her father when she is only seven years old in a very grand wedding ceremony. She is mesmerized by her new home and the people in it. She is also chided for having a dark complexion. In her confusion, she finds solace in Arjun, his child bridegroom an Uma, a widowed child bride. The story is her introduction to the new household and the strange customs.
5. R.C.’s First Holiday:
R. C. Banerjee is a strict and controlling man. He is punctual and gets angry for trifle things. He acutely controls his mother, wife, daughter and all the servants. He decides to go on a holiday. His family who is not used to such an outing is at odds on how to deal with such an event and slowly begin to enjoy. After a series of events, when they see R.C.’s authority being challenged and encounter a new-found freedom, the three women rebel to do things as they want. Seeing their rebellion, R.C. gives up and finds a freedom from his nature as well.
6. To Simla in a Tonga:
Anima marries Ananda in a rushed marriage after he spots her one day and the two fall in love. He moves her to Simla where he got job working in the Secretariat. She is happy living with him there but soon gets weary of the English and starts taking interest in the Indian Freedom Movement. She attends rallies by Gandhi against her husband’s wishes. He is forced to attend a British party by her husband where she witnesses a series of humiliating events. She gets angry and returns to her house where she sets her foreign clothes on fire and starts wearing only homespun garments.
7.Trials of a Tall Aunt:
Roopbala, who is tall, is married to man six inches shorter than her. He becomes a subject of ridicule in his village and gradually it results in him resenting his wife for being taller. She tries to make him happy but in a drunken stupor he tries to kill her by shooting her. In an accident, he is shot. Roopbala flees but starts living life as a widow, travelling from one holy place to another in search of peace. She is soon poverty-stricken but starts a journey to Badrinath. She slowly comes to take pride in her height and begins to live life as a vendor at the temple, when she is surprised to see her husband making a pilgrimage with another but much shorter and spiteful wife. She is finally freed of her guilty conscience.
8. Life in a Palace:
Gita runs from her home to get a job in Nagpur when her husband renounces the world to become a saint, against the wishes of her and her husband’s family. She is met by a queen of a princely state who asks her to join her in the palace. She agrees and slowly becomes an independent woman living in a palace having a position of her own.
