Would the moon be more beautiful without the black spot on it? Who can tell? Through hunger & frustration Shankar (Dilip Kumar) lived a life of his own. He found it easier to curve out life from a peace of dead wood or a mould of clay, but he could not fight the injustice of the world around him that talked good but never did good.

To escape from that cruel world around him, to escape from the burning hatred that smouldered his soul, he trekked his footsteps always to the doors of the wine shop. His mother (Lalita Pawar) suffers and wept silently. 'That was only like the black spot on the moon', thought his one and only friend Parvati (Nimmi) and waited patiently for the day when fortune would smile on the little paradise she was building around Shankar.

But inscrutable are the ways of providence! Parvati's brother woke up one morning and found himself rich, and an insurmountable wall popped up between the two birds of the little paradise. To be near the only man, she cared for, Parvati gave up everything. Her brother's gentle persuasion, her friend Pushpa's tearful pleading, her sister-in-law's angry scoffing could not shake her from her resolution, to erase out the only spot from the life of the man she loved and to put him on the road to recovery & success.

But Shankar was that child of the soil who was hurt and loved to hurt others and one day he almost bled Paroo to death. But the blood of his beloved, which he shed with his own hands, was all that necessary. He left his home, he left his mother, he left his love to learn to be good. And one day as the sun smiled through the clouds he came back home to claim his life and love. The unkind world was again unkind to him and Shankar again plunged himself into the depths of an abysmal darkness and degradation. His mother, diseased and disheartened, closed her eyes never to open them again and he, a victim of society's cruel justice, was snatched away from his beloved, from the only light that ever lit the darkness of his unhappy existence.

Two lives are tossed on the turbulent waves of life! Will they ever find the shore? Will they ever see the silver lining on the clouds that gathered over them? In the hushed silence of the approaching darkness a prayer escaped their lips - 'Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on --'