After his mother was killed by bandits, nine-year-old Ishvaku moves to live with her family in the Chambal ravines, whose closed terrains seemed to have locked its communities in mythic time.

Alluding to the legend of the eponymous mythological character, Ashwatthama follows a nine-year-old boy as he finds refuge in escape as a way of dealing with the loss of his mother. This Braj-dialect drama gently illuminates how myth and religion offer coping mechanisms in a fraught existence.