Shenkottai, a small town in south India.
Vanchi, shy but imaginative, absorbs cultural lore from his herbalist grandfather. Defying his mostly-absent father he goes far away to attend college, where he is introduced to radical politics - though he remains a different bystander.
At the same time, Robert Ashe, a British officer, is posted to Tinnevelly, a town near Shenkottai. Ashe earns the ire of the anti-colonial movement when he suppresses a riot and jails its leader.
Having witnessed the riot, Vanchi joins a revolutionary cell that sends him to Pondicherry, a French colonial town near Madras, where he is transformed into an assassin. Using coded telegrams, the assassination plot is fixed. As Ashe's luxury train waits at an isolated station, will Vanchi raise his gun and shoot for Indian independence?
