Meena, a wealthy, educated girl, has been promised in marriage to Sunder, a sheltered young man who has received an extremely traditional religious education. Displeased, Meena sets out to find a more suitable candidate, but is taken in by Manohar, a gold-digging conman. Finding Sunder to be clueless about the world, Manohar is soon manipulating him as well as Meena in his schemes to gain possession of Meena's fortune.

In this loose adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, childhood sweethearts Kamla and Shankar are separated and grow up in different worlds. The girl is brought up to be a priestess, while the boy becomes a dejected thakur, turned vindictive by life's injustices. Fate inevitably brings them together again, but Kamla does not know about her beloved's secret.