1939, a carnival sweeps throught the sun flooded streets of a distant Portuguese trading post. In the midst of the deafening noise, a lonely man clutching a bottle tries to get away from the throng of masked dancers surging throught the town.
He turns a street corner and watches in a daze as a funeral procession goes by. Wreathed with flowers, the coffin is loaded aboard the boat linking Goa with Cochin, a large shipping port in the South of India. The man mingles with the crowd of Indians massed on the upper deck. He is in deep despair. As night falls on the river he confides in a traveller, on his way back to Europe. The tragic story he tells the man is also a heart-rending cry for help...