 Brahmachari has no idea his real name. His parents told him on their deathbeds that they had found him at the side of the road, which is where he returned upon their deaths. When he grew to manhood, he never refused any orphans, and they keep getting left for him, and the mutual attachment grows and he does not consider adopting them to other homes. When the film begins in 1965, he is a bachelor who has never loved a woman, with a charge of 12 children and a dog. Working days as a magazine photographer and evenings as a musician, he still needs to find a way to pay his 200,000 rupee mortgage. His editor is angry because he took his kids on so many shoots that readership has dropped off, thinking it a children s magazine, and offers him 300 rupees for a picture of a pretty girl. When he finds one, she is about to drown herself in the ocean. He asks her if she will let him take her picture before she jumps. After that, he takes her in. Her name is Sheetal Chadhabari, but the children nickname her "Didi." She tells them that she was engaged since age 10 to Ravi Khanna, but their fathers died and he broke the agreement, yet she was still attached to him. Raavi Khanna is now a wealthy, womanizing playboy in Bombay, and he finds her rural ways disgusting, so Brahmachari visits one of Ravi s parties, where he keeps a blackface waiter who tries to speak French. There we learn about all the women he his interested in, and one, Roop, whom he has gotten pregnant. Brahmachari decides that he will help Didi become a mix of the women Ravi likes, so that she can marry him and get him to pay his 200,000 rupee mortgage.