- A folk tale - supernatural love story about a ghost who falls in love with a newlywed woman.
- Parsimonious Bhanwarlal is a Bania (businessman) who lives in Navalgarh, Rajasthan, along with his wife; his sons Sunderlal and Kishanlal; Sunderlal is married to Gajrobai and has a son. During the annual camel race, Sunderlal loses the race to the Thakur and out of shame leaves home, never to return. Now Kishanlal has come of age and is married to Lachchi. But on the very next day of the marriage, he must leave for Jamnagar to expand business, and can return only after 5 years. A tearful Lachchi bids him goodbye, but to her pleasant surprise he returns within a few days, and informs his dad that he met a holy sage who had instructed him to return as he will find five gold coins every morning. Pleased with this, Bhanwarlal does not object to Kishanlal's return. After four years, it is now time for the camel race again, and this time Bhanwarlal's camel wins, much to the chagrin of the Thakur who suspects witchcraft. Then Lachchi gets pregnant and on the day of the child's birth the family finds out to their horror that there is an impostor who is claiming to be Kishanlal, and the husband of Lachchi. The family and the town are unable to decide who is real and who the impostor, as both look identical, so they decide to approach the king and do his bidding. The question remains, who is the second Kishanlal and what possible motive could he have for coming to claim Lachchi as his wife?—rAjOo (gunwanti@hotmail.com)
- The movie is narrated by two puppets, voiced by Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna Pathak Shah.
Enthusiastic young Lachchi (Rani Mukerji) is to be married to Kishan (Shah Rukh Khan), the son of the rich merchant Bhanwarlal (Anupam Kher). Kishan is a dutiful son who honors his father's wish to start a new, far-away business on a predetermined auspicious date, which happens to be the day after the wedding ceremony. Kanwarlal (Dilip Prabhavalkar) is Bhanwar's younger brother. On the way back the wedding party stops at a Dharamshala, which is rumored to be host to 128 ghosts. Kamli (Aditi Govitrikar) is Lachchi's best friend who has come with her to leave her at her new home. At the Dharamshala, a ghost sees Lachchi and is taken by her beauty. The ghost follows Lachchi and she can sense a presence and gets really scared. The ghost follows Lachchi as her caravan moves from the Dharamshala.
On the wedding night, Kishan turns away from his wife to finish his bookkeeping, and in the early morning hours sets off on a business trip that is to last five years. Lachchi is devastated; Gajrobai (Juhi Chawla), her husband's sister-in-law, consoles her, empathizing on the grounds that Gajrobai's husband Sunderlal (Sunil Shetty) has also disappeared without informing anyone. The ghost sees Kishan leaving the village and assumes an human form to speak to Kishan at a watering hole. The ghost learns that Kishan is leaving on family business for the next 5 yrs. The next day, the ghost appears at Bhanwarlal's doorstep, having taken Kishan's shape and voice because of his own attachment to Lachchi. The ghost tells Bhanwarlal that during his voyage he met a sage and took great care of him. The sage was happy with his Seva and granted him a boon for 5 gold coins every single morning for the rest of his life. Bhanwarlal forgets everything and hugs Kishan back into the house.
At night, the ghost meets Lachchi and admits that he is not Kishan. He is a ghost who can assume any form and loves her. Lachchi is thus presented with a dilemma between the representation of all of her desires in the form of the ghost who has taken the form of her real husband. She takes this newfound, sensual, magical, social, self-confident version of Kishan as hers. As Kishan, the ghost befriends all of the real Kishan's family. His only blunder is in his treatment of the messenger Bhoja (Rajpal Yadav), who is perplexed by the idea that Kishan has sent a letter from his business trip only to receive it himself in his own house and offended when the ghost (who appears as Kishan) does not offer him a drink of water. Bhoja returns to Jamnagar and confronts the real Kishan on how come he is back and forth from Navalgarh before himself. Kishan thinks Bhoja is a drunkard who never got to Navalgarh and hence has returned empty handed without a letter or any supplies.
Kishan-Ghost wants to race the 2 young camels of the house in a race. Bhanwarlal is against it as he thinks Sunderlal left home after he was embarrassed after he lost a similar race 7 yrs ago. Kishan-Ghost convinces Bhanwarlal that if he wins the race, Sunderlal might return home. At the race, Kishan-ghost uses his bag of magic tricks to confuse all the other camels and helps the house camels to win, reclaiming lost family honor. After 2 yrs, Kishan-real again sends a message home via Bhoja. But this time Bhoja's wife burns the letter as she hasn't forgotten the insult to Bhoja from 2 yrs ago.
Lachchi's bliss goes on until four years later when she is pregnant and the real Kishan returns to see if the rumors about his wife's pregnancy are true. He returns to find the ghost in his (Kishan's) own form. At the first the family considers the Kishan-real to be a con artist and disregard him. But Kishan-real produces many witnesses and proofs of his authenticity. But the society, specifically the Thakurs who lost the camel race, force Bhanwarlal to ascertain the truth. They are looking for an opportunity to avenge their dishonor at the races by slinging mud at Bhanwar's family. As Lachchi gives birth to a girl, Sunderlal also returns to the house.
Kishan's family is unable to determine which of the doppelgangers is the real Kishan (the ghost refusing to confess). They decide to visit the king so that he can arbitrate. On the way to the king they meet an old shepherd, Gadariya (Amitabh Bachchan) who helps them out. He asks the real son of Bhanwarlal to pick up hot coals, asks the real husband to gather the sheep, and asks Lachchi's real paramour to enter a water-bottle (Kishan-ghost kept still on the first 2 tests, but entered the bottle since this was a test and a challenge of his love for her). The real Kishan is found out and everyone returns home. Lachchi is devastated over the loss of the ghost. In the very end, it is revealed that the ghost has escaped the bottle and taken control of Kishan's body to live with her. By now Lachchi has given birth to a daughter, LuniMa, by whom the ghost exposes his identity to Lachchi. The puppets end the story, remarking that this is a very old folk tale.
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