Rampyari, the daughter of a Temple priest, is wed to an older man, the widower Saubhagmal ji Vaidya, with whom she has moved from the sea to a small desert town of Rajasthan to help raise his two teenage girls from his earlier marriage. Before her marriage to Vaidji, Rampyari, his second wife, had promised herself to a sailor - whom she called 'Samandar' and to whom she had given her heart but who had then disappeared.
Years later as the play begins, Rampyari's family life is strained. The couple had lost a child early on, and their partnership is more kind than passionate. Her relationship with her step daughters is poor; now she has no child of her own. She seems unhappy with her life and constantly fantasises about the sea; she often feels surrounded by the sea, but it is actually a 'Mareechika' (Mirage). So when the mysterious, handsome sailor Samandar - billed as The Stranger in the lyrical drama -reappears to make his claim on her promise, she is torn between her marital duty and the tidal pull of her old lover. Faced with the decision of what to do, she persuades her husband that she must have the chance to make her choice.
The Bhopa and Bhopi as the 'Sutradhars' of the ''Pubuji ki Phad'', which mysteriously becomes 'Ibsen ji ki Phad'' are the narrators yet a part of the play. Somewhere during the course of the narratives, the 'Sutradhars' or story tellers themselves become the characters they play, almost as the spirit world and the real world merged into one. But fact is stranger than fiction, they say.
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