Book excerpt: An extraordinary story of Anant Khare who appeared to be an ordinary drawing teacher, living and working near Pune at the turn of the century. He decided that his contribution to the nationalist movement would be to educate his daughters to the highest level. By the 1920s, his daughters were independent, single career women at a time when their peers had been married off at the age of ten. His wife too was running a flourishing dairy. Yet Kharemaster felt inadequate beside his educated daughters and sons, all adept in a world seemingly out of his reach. Writing about her father at the age of 88, his daughter Balutai, using her penname 'Vibhavari Shirurkar', is as unflinchingly honest about herself as she is about her father.