 Even during his school days, Kewal Khanna had always been attracted to the theater, especially the one about Bilwa Mangal and Chintamani, and all he wanted to do was open his very own theatrical company and play Bilwa, while his childhood sweetheart, Nimmi, would play Chintamani. He did attempt to do so, but on the day of the play, Nimmi and her parents moved away from Lakhsmanpur. When Kewal grew up, he attended college, meets fellow collegian Nirmala Devi, who was not his Nimmi, but he decides to call her as such and asks her to enact the role of Chintamani, to which she agrees. On the day of the play, she gets married and had to re-locate. Heartbroken again, but not disheartened, Kewal s obsession gets him in trouble with his Advocate father, who wants him to continue in the family tradition and become an Advocate as well, leading to Kewal leaving the residence. He travels to Bombay, locates the Royal Opera House and meets with it s owner, Rajan, and together they create  Kewal Theatre . Kewal even finds a girl of unknown parentage and name, re-names her Nimmi, and both fall in love with each other. Kewal returns home to invite his parents to the opening show, but it was during the play that he finds out that Rajan loves Nimmi. He asks Nimmi to forget him and accept Raja as her life-partner, but she refuses. So he takes the drastic task of setting the theater on fire, as well as setting afire the left side of his face, leaving him horribly disfigured. He does succeed, the theater is destroyed, his face disfigured, and results in Nimmi screaming in horror at his disfigurement. Nimmi and he part ways, leaving Kewal to continue on to his heartbroken journey of finding his lost love, the real Nimmi, who, if found, may not have anything to do with him, especially in his present condition.