A novel about women bound by their experience and separate by societal conventions Sera Dubash is an upper middle class parsi housewife whose opulent surroundings hide years of disappointment and shame and Bhima, a stoic illiterate hardened by a life of despair and loss, has worked in the Dubash household for more than 20 years, cleaning furniture she is forbidden to sit on, washing glasses from which she is not allowed to drink