Vishnu, the odd-job man in a Bombay apartment block, lies dying on the staircase landing. In his fevered state, he looks back on his love affair with the seductive Padmini while around him is played out a drama of the apartment dwellers: Mrs Pathak and Mrs Asrani's ferocious bickering over their shared kitchen; Vinod Taneja obsessively playing his dead wife's favourite album; Mr Jalal (a Muslim) dreaming of a pan-Hindu-Muslim path to enlightenment while his son Salim plots a film-style elopement with the daughter of the Hindu Asranis downstairs. Then to ignite this mix of social and religious differences comes Mr Jalal's pronouncement that Vishnu is no ordinary man but the final incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu himself . . .
