​Sakharam Binder, the protagonist, thinks he has the system by the tail and he can disregard the culture & societal values as long as he is truthful. That system is the de facto enslavement of women in postcolonial India, despite the promises of democracy and modernity. Sakharam, a bookbinder, picks up other men’s discarded women — castoff wives who would otherwise be homeless, destitute or murdered with impunity, and takes them in as domestic servants and sex partners. He rules his home like a tin-pot tyrant, yet each woman is told that she is free to leave whenever she likes. He will even give her a sari, 50 rupees, and a ticket to wherever she wants to go. Everything good and proper, where Sakharam Binder is concerned, he says. He’s no husband to forget common decency. What he does not anticipate are the moral and emotional complications of the arrangement, which prove heartbreakingly ruinous to everyone involved.