Growing up in a small railway town, Arun's acceptance to the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology is seemingly his golden ticket out of a life plagued by everyday cruelties and deprivations. At the predominantly male campus he meets two students from similar backgrounds. Unlike Arun they possess the sheer will and confidence to break through merciless social barriers. The alumni of IIT eventually go on to become the financial wizards of their generation, but Arun fails to leverage his elite education for social capital. He pursues a writerly life, retreating to a small village in the Himalayas with his aging mother. Alia is writing an expose of his former classmates, and draws Arun back to the prospering world where he must be someone else if he is to belong.