Sripathi Rao's life is as arid as the dusty South Indian town where he lives. All he ever wanted was an ordinary life with a solid job and a happy family. But Sripathi has never been a lucky man. Now ageing and disenchanted, struggling to keep his job, Sripathi lives in the crumbling ancestral house with his lonely spinster sister, embittered mother, and a wife and son he hardly knows anymore. His only joy is his talented, vibrant daughter Maya. But when Maya marries Alan, a fellow student at her American university, Sripathi angrily cuts her off, until he receives a phone call from Vancouver informing him that Maya and her husband have been killed in a car crash. All Sripathi is left with are his regrets and Maya's seven-year-old daughter, Nandana. Confused and scared, little Nandana must move to India, and adjust to a life with the family she has never met before.