Vibha and Baitali

Queen Vibha, ruler of the ancient kingdom of Ujjayini, is manipulated by a sinister mendicant named Aghora into retrieving the corpse of the Baitali-a female spirit and counterpart to the legendary Betaal-from a haunted Peepal tree in the cremation grounds. The quest is a trap designed to force even a powerful queen to submit to patriarchal sorcery and endless cycles of riddles and submission. Carrying the impossibly heavy spirit (the literal weight of centuries of female oppression) through a long, moonless night, Vibha must endure a series of twenty-five tales that echo classic Indian folktales but are deliberately twisted to justify male dominance, female fragility, and rigid tradition.
Each story the Baitali tells is a moral snare meant to elicit either silence (which would shatter Vibha's head) or speech (which returns the spirit to the tree and restarts the torment). Instead of accepting the false choices offered-celebrating fragile men, helpless women, coercive ownership, self-destructive "love, " or retributive justice-Vibha systematically dismantles every premise. She reframes hyper-sensitive women as powerful intelligence assets, voids marriages built on monstrosity or duress, exposes performative male sacrifice as cowardice, and transforms criminals' skills into public goods through restorative justice rather than execution.
With each answer she grows stronger and the Baitali's ancient resentment softer, until the spirit herself begins to hope. In the final confrontation inside the palace, the mendicant attempts to force one last fatal question, breaking the sacred covenant that only the spirit may pose riddles. Recognizing that true liberation lies not in winning the game but in refusing to play it at all, Vibha remains silent, drops the corpse, and walks past both sorcerer and spirit to claim her throne.
The Baitali, freed at last from her role as enforcer of patriarchal logic, dissolves in radiant light while the mendicant disintegrates. Vibha immediately issues sweeping reforms-nullifying coerced contracts, elevating domestic and intellectual labor, implementing restorative justice, and establishing matrilineal legitimacy-ushering Ujjayini into a new era where law serves life instead of tradition, and a queen rules unapologetically by the clarity won from carrying, and then releasing, the full weight of history.