Late 1930s. Medical College, Calcutta. At the students’ annual function, two scenes from Shakespeare’s mixed-race tragedy Othello are to be performed by Clayton and Rina, Anglo-Indian students who were dating each other. But just before the anointed time, Clayton vanishes, and the ‘mantle of the Moor’ falls on his classmate, the debonair ‘native’ Krishnendu, someone Rina had grown to particularly dislike. What happens during the play is unexpected and insurgent. Through Othello’s harrowing confrontation of Desdemona’s ‘disloyalty’, her equally fearless defence, his impetuous smothering of her, the inconsolable self-loathing, and his dolorous self-stabbing, Rina and Krishnendu (Uttam Kumar) fall suddenly, inexplicably but immeasurably in love.