It is poignant collection of seventeen stories from one of India's most prolific Hindi writers. The title story is about Sardar Shiv Singh who is a district engineer living his life abiding by the values of honesty and righteousness. However, the social structure around him is devoid of morals and functions solely for the motive of personal gain. Such a conflict leads to numerous problems that crop up in the life of Sardar Shiv Singh and his family. His refusal to adapt to the dishonest ways of his peers earns him a demotion and the wrath of his seniors. The engineer, without any fault of his own, is transferred to a distant district. To add to his woes, Sardar Shiv Singh's daughter's marriage gets called off because of his poor monetary conditions. The story takes the readers through the inner dilemma of the protagonist who constantly weighs the good and the bad of sticking to his virtues and succumbing to social and peer pressure. It also highlights the importance of the support of one's family in one's life and hard times. This short story is a narration of the trysts in the life of a man who, due to no fault of his own, suffers at the hand of the society. It instils virtues of honesty into the readers and shows the state of morals in the real world today.
