The film set in Varanasi, follows the lives of a young orphan (Nikhil Sahni), a low-caste teenage boy (Vicky Kaushal) who falls in love with an upper-caste girl (Shweta Tripathi), her father (Sanjay Mishra) and a woman (Richa Chadha) caught in a sex scandal. Masaan is Hindi word for crematorium, where the teenage boy works. As their stories collide, in girls father who is fighting a taboo, the young orphan finds an unlikely father figure
