After abandoning Gauri, his wife who is visually impaired, Sanjeev goes on a hunting trip and is presumed dead. He returns months later to find that his best friend Sunil has stolen his identity.

Kidnapped at a very young age, two twin brothers are separated from there respective mother.

Shanno falls for the flautist Kanhaiya, believing him to be Lord Krishna, and decides to marry him. However, she is shocked after realising that he is, in fact, the village drunkard.

Raja Saheb (Ashok Kumar) is a rich man, strict father to sons Virendra (Sunil Dutt) and Mahendra. One day, Mahendra has a big fight with his father and dies of shock afterwards. Virendra leaves home and falls in bad company with Pran. Later, Virendra falls in love with a poor girl (Nutan), eventually deciding to marry her. At home, a lonely Raja Saheb falls ill. When Virendra tells his father about his love, his father reveals his own past: He was in love with a poor girl, who died leaving a daughter (Padmini) behind, who dances on the roads to earn a living. Virendra decides to bring his sister home.

Asha lives a poor lifestyle along with her widowed dad, is in love with aspiring doctor Raj Kumar, and hopes to marry him someday. When Raj announces that he is traveling abroad to study, she decides to wait for him, but her father, on his deathbed, makes her promise to marry Simla-based Gopal Chopra, who is the son of his friend, Shyamlal, to which Asha agrees. Gopal gets a promotion and re-locates to Bombay but continues to remain in touch with his family. Then the past is re-visited when Raj, now a doctor, comes to live in their neighborhood. Their idyllic lives are shattered when Raj is arrested for killing a man named Mangatram who was blackmailing Asha for hiding a secret from the rest of her family.

Burma-based widow, Parvati, along with two sons, Prem and Rajesh, re-locates to Bombay to live with her late husband's friend and widower, Sewakram, and his two daughters, Shanti and Durga. He returns some cash and jewelery to her that was entrusted to him, and she re-locates to live in a big bungalow. Shortly thereafter, Prem and Rajesh get married to Shanti and Durga respectively. The entire family live harmoniously until Parvati is told by Mrs. Pereira that Prem has been physically abusing his pregnant wife. Parvati and Rajesh undertake to rein-in Prem - and it this overture that will not only shatter their idyllic lifestyle but force both brothers to take up arms against each other.

It takes a debilitating disease like cancer to reunite brother (Raj Babbar) and sister (Nutan).

Anjali lives in a hostel and always waits for her mother Kamini to come take her during holidays but Kamini never takes Anjali home; instead she takes her on holidays to different places. Kamini pretends to be a wealthy woman in front of Anjali, but she actually works for the Bombay-based Don Sultanbhai--she conducts robberies for him. Anjali falls in love with Anand and both want to get their parents together, but at the last moment Kamini is called back to Bombay by Sultanbhai; this doesn't go over well with Anand's mother. Sultanbhai finds out from Kamini about Anjali and how life was cruel to her he promises Kamini that he will get Anjali married to Anand and makes a fake family out of his gang and present them in front of Anand's family.

An orphan adopted by an upper caste family never learns of her untouchable caste background. This proves problematic when years later, she falls in love with an upper caste man.

In 1930s British-ruled Bengal, a prison-doctor falls in love with a convicted murderer with past connections to a freedom fighter.