A partially mute man dreams of performing on stage in dramas but often keeps falling in trouble with the villagers due to his eccentric ways. By contrast, his son is a responsible man who dreams of climbing up the ladder and making something of his life. The film explores how the clash of personalities results in problems down the road for this father-son duo.

On holiday from boarding school, young Ishvaku is fascinated by the bedtime story his mother relates to him—that of the warrior Ashwatthama, from the Mahabharata, whose blind vengeance provokes a curse from Lord Krishna, forcing him to wander the earth in eternal suffering. But the story is interrupted by a bandit raid in which Ishvaku’s mother is killed, and Ishvaku is packed off to his ancestral village in the Chambal Valley ravines of Central India. There he discovers a family in crisis, whose rituals, traditions and orthodox feudal values are becoming redundant. Meanwhile, Ishvaku’s own life take a strange turn, as a visiting sacred bull predicts that both wisdom and tragedy will soon come to him. In anticipation of such tragedy, Ishvaku attempts to escape into the magical realm of Ashwatthama