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Saroja is the wife of Tim. Her family lives in Delhi. Gopu and his wife Charu come to Kabir Street to take Tim to inspect the girl at Trichy in the house of a cousin on the side, of Charu. The would-be bride appears led by her mother. She is a thick-set girl in a blue lace saree, bedecked with jewellery from head to foot. She shyly enters the room where guests are sitting with her eyes fixed on the ground. Her eyes are hardly to be located between her eyebrows and her high cheeks. To Nagaraj, she looks like an alien. But to his surprise, Tim looks at the girl with fixed interest and the girl also throws a lingering glance at Tim. The girl's father induces her to sing some film tune with a harmonium. Nagaraj does not like the tilt of the tune and the way in which she sings this film song. He cannot stand the spectacle of the girl opening and closing her lips, exposing her teeth while singing. Saroja's father impresses Gopu with the information that she knows over a hundred songs. Gramophone companies want her to record but he has refused the offer by saying that she will not do so till she has completed her M.A. Moreover, he adds that young people in Delhi have opportunities to develop their talents. Seroja is a member of a group often called to perform at social functions, colleges, schools and clubs. Both Tim and his father are favourably inclined towards the girl. Besides, she is to bring a dowry of ten thousand rupees alongwith some silver. Both the parties agree and the marriage is solemnised.
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After marriage, both Saroja and Tim live in the middle room of the courtyard which has been vacated by Gopu while shifting to the village after the division of the inherited property. Tim sticks to his routine of attending his job in Kismet - a restaurant and bar situated in New Extension, a modern locality of Malgudi. Saroja practises film songs and tunes on a harmonium in her room and thereby highly disturbs the mental tranquillity and concentration of Nagaraj who finds it impossible to continue the writing of his book on Narada. His effort to tell Saroja categorically to postpone her practice to later hours of the day ends in a ludicrous fiasco since he lacks sufficient courage to implement his idea. One is amused by his mood of desperation in which he prays to Narada to inspire the girl not to deafen him with her harmonium and film hits.
Saroja is a modern-fashioned girl whose interest lies in film songs and not in classical traditional songs. She is educated, vocal and frank. When Nagaraj comes to her room with an idea to ask her to stop the music, she asks him if he has liked this new tune she is rehearsing on the harmonium. Nagaraj goes back without giving any reply. This infuriates her. She takes it as an insult. She explains this incident to her husband, Tim. Both of them decide instantaneously to leave their uncle's house in an embittered mood in order to settle down in an outhouse in Kismet. The news given by Talkative Man that Saroja will also be employed as a singer in the tavern, Kismet, startles Nagaraj. He considers it as an insult that a lady of Kabir Street family which is thought to be aristocratic since generations should sing to an assembly of strangers in tavern. Ultimately, this eventuality takes place. But, later on Tim has a quarrel with the Secretary of Kismet who gets Saroja's harmonium removed to a far-off corner as it disturbs intolerably the members playing cards or chatting to one another. Tim takes it as a humiliation caused to his wife and picks upa quarrel with the Secretary. Thereafter he, alongwith his wife, comes back to his uncle's house in Kabir Street and occupies the middle room in the house previously held by them. Their coming-back home gives much relief to Sita, the wife of Nagaraj.