In a small Indian village in 1900, nineteen-year-old Jaya Devani yearns for a freedom beyond the confines of the life expected of her. When she begins a tumultuous love affair with her British colonial employer she finds herself on course for a new life as an ayah, a nanny, in London. Arriving on British shores as the suffragette movement is growing, Jaya begins to grapple with a choice: can she really find freedom in the arms of her lover, or will she have to seek out her own way to be truly free?