Dalit Jagseer Singh's troubles do not seem to end in this poignant portrayal of life in a small village of Punjab in newly independent India.

Jasbir, the son of the sharecropper, Thola, is treated as a brother by the landlord Dharam Singh. The landlord's son, however, does not continue this family tradition. As Jasbir's mother belongs to a nomed caste, the hero's love for the bride of the impotent barber Nika is fraught with problems. Symbolically, the building of Jasbir's father's tomb and then of his own tomb hastens jasbir's physical deterioration and death.