The banks of river Sutlej are haunted by its past. Sutlej river has flown from the Himalayas in Tibet through the Indian subcontinent for thousands of years. Today, for miles Sutlej forms the border between India and Pakistan.

In 1975, Vidhyavati Kaur's ashes were immersed in Sutlej in Punjab, the same river where her son Bhagat Singh, the young Indian revolutionary was disposed off after a brutal execution by the British Raj.

The ghost of Vidhyavati haunts the banks of river Sutlej. Sutlej that once carried the legacies of rig vedas, the ancient Indian hymns, of martyrs and mothers that fought for freedom of their land has been made captive to colonization, capitalism, climate change and conflict between two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan. Its waters are not free.

Today, Vidhyavati grieves her river and the impact of the past cruelties on its present. She narrates the story of the river's past while Khair-ud-din and Nasir, an old fisherman and young boy living on the banks of the river share their experiences in the present.

Khair-ud-din is an old fisherman who has lived on the banks of rivers for as long as he can remember. He belongs to the river and continues to believe in Sutlej’s oneness with its people, its mighty power to create and sustain life and death and a bond that can not be broken.

Nasir is a young boy who believes the river has hardened. He tells cautionary tales of its waters turning into poison and its anger unleashing without a warning. Life on the banks of the river is no longer the same. The bond is broken.

The Mother, The Sons, and The Holy River is a journey to the heart of river Sutlej and its banks. Merging reality with fiction, past, folktale, history and memories, an amorphous narrative unfolds.