Shashikala is very rude to her dumb niece. The niece, Jaya Prada is beautiful, is an extremely talented dancer and stoically bears all the torture meted out to her. She also tries hard to subdue her passion, dancing.
In the same village there is a 'dafliwala' an orphan, who fulfills his needs from the money people give him listening to his 'dafli'.
The drumbeater empathizes with the plight of the helpless girl and encourages her to dance. Slowly the two strike a friendship. The dumb girl starts dancing to the drumbeater's rhythm. When her aunt discovers this, she tries to marry her off to a loose- charactered man who is already married and has driven his wife away after physically torturing her.
The drumbeater saves her from the doomed marriage in the nick of the time. Both of them sail to a different land. There the girl expresses her love for the drumbeater but he ignores her overtures as he has TB. In the end, the drumbeater is cured, and the two get married.
