The movie is about Ram and Leela, their love, lust and the drama afterwards. In a Gujarati village, two clans, Rajadi and Sanera, have been at odds with each other for the past 500 years. The film opens with a violent altercation between the two over petty matters. Meghji (Abhimanyu Singh), a Rajadi head, sets out to kill Bhavani (Gulshan Devaiah) who is a Sanera, after the latter tries to kill the former's son. Bhavani is almost killed but Ram (Ranveer Singh), Meghji's younger brother, intervenes and saves him, only to be reprimanded by Meghji. All the Rajadi elders are irked by Ram's mindset of making truce with the other clan.
During the festival of Holi, Ram boldly enters the house of the Sanera heads and flirts with Leela (Deepika Padukone), while her mother, Dhankor Baa (Supriya Pathak Kapur), the chieftain of the Saneras, is busy arranging a match for her daughter with a simple-minded NRI. Ram and Leela get romantically involved and plan to elope but a grim turn of events follows when Kanji accidentally kills Meghji, and is in turn killed by Ram.
To escape the suffering, Ram and Leela elope and marry but Ram's friends trace them and trick Ram by making him drunk and knock him out of his senses. They send an SMS informing the Saneras of their location from Ram's phone. The next morning, Leela is forcibly taken back home by Bhavani, her cousin, while Ram is hailed as a hero by the Rajadis for soiling the reputation of Leela, and her chieftain. He is rewarded by being made the new chieftain of the Rajadi. Leela still retains faith in Ram and sends Rasila (Richa Chadda), widow of Kanji, to give Ram an ultimatum to take her away. Rasila, however is molested by Ram's friends and when Dhankor Baa learns of this, she sends Bhavani and other men to assault Kesar (Barkha Bisht Sengupta), Meghji's widow, who manages to evade them.
However, at the event, Bhavani secretly shoots and seriously injures Dhankor Baa but the Rajadis are blamed. Leela is made the chieftain and gets busy tending to her mother. Ram and Leela bitterly carry out a negotiation with the sarpanch but Bhavani manipulates things and makes Leela blindly sign a document ordering the killings of Rajadis.
During Dusshera, as the Ramlila parade is ending, many Rajadis are killed and the village is on the brink of war, which Ram senses. Ram and Leela believe they are the sole owners of each other's lives, and hence they decide to kill each other instead of dying fighting. Leela agrees and both commit suicide, not knowing that Dhankor Baa has undergone a change of heart and has killed Bhavani, ordering peace be meted out to the other clan. The two clans finally unite to cremate the bodies of Ram and Leela together respectfully.
The movie is the desi version of Romeo and Juliet. The ending is not a happy one and what expected was the reunion of the two.