The story of Imlie tells the story of a smart village girl who is forced to marry a journalist after they seek shelter in a hut during heavy rains.
However, on reaching the city, she realizes that her husband is engaged to be married. And a number of events followed after.
The series premieres on Star Life on Tuesday, August 23 at 10: 00 pm.
Imlie Star Life Full Story
Imlie, an 18-year-old girl is from a village named Pagdandia located in the Ballia district of Uttar Pradesh. Her mother, Meethi had a one-night stand with Dev Chaturvedi, a city man who left Meethi impregnated. So, the villagers came up with a rule, if a man spends a night with a girl, they have to get married. Satyakam is a farmer turned rebel, who is fighting for Pagdandia’s rights is Imlie’s father figure. Imlie obtains a scholarship after she earns her degree. She wanted to be a police officer to provide support to her foster father and her unmarried mother.
Aditya “Adi” Kumar Tripathi is a Delhi-based journalist working in Bhaskar Times. His girlfriend is Malini Chaturvedi (Dev’s daughter) for seven years. Before their engagement, Adi leaves for Pagdandia to take Satyakam’s interview where he proves to the world that he is a revolutionist, not a rebel. Imlie helps Adi in guiding the village, where they both had to stay in a hut due to heavy rain and thunderstorms. The next day Imlie’s Nani and the villagers threaten to kill Adi if he doesn’t marry Imlie thinking they both had spent the night together. Adi didn’t want to get married, instead, he was ready to die. While the villagers tried to kill Adi, Imlie stops them and agrees to marry Adi to save his life. She tries to contact Malini with Adi’s phone, but the effort goes in vain when the villagers find it out. Imlie and Adi get forcefully married.
Coming to New Delhi, Imlie introduces herself as a maid to the Tripathi family to save Adi. Adi treated her very badly. She stayed in a corner in his house. While Imlie wins everyone’s hearts, Adi is afraid that if everyone likes her, it will be heartbreaking for them when she leaves one day. However, the reason Imlie sticks with this marriage is because of her upbringing, beliefs in marriage, her faith in God, and concern that if she left, the villagers will kill Adi.
Before Adi and Malini’s marriage, Adi reveals the marriage truth to Malini, making her faint. The doctor advises him not to do so. Imlie sees her husband marrying Malini, her half-sister with a broken heart. Adi has to go to Pagdandia for the government’s peace meeting with Satyakam, and the Tripathi family sends Imlie too with him. He decides to leave her there permanently. He understands Imlie’s dilemma and point of view and feels very bad. She saves his life from a bomb blast that night. Later, Imlie is gunshot while saving Adi from Chandu and he brings her to a hospital in Delhi. Adi realises how badly he treated her and becomes soft with her. Imlie also saves Malini from a bridge accident. Imlie maintains their relationship alone by her faith. Soon Adi realises Imlie is his true love and Malini was just a friend. He also learns that they are half-sisters during his Pagdandia visit. Although he proposes to Imlie she thinks about Malini and asks him not to break the vows he took during his marriage with Malini, then only she would come back. However, Malini thinks Adi is cheating on her and attempts suicide, and Imlie donates her blood to save her life. She then tells Adi that she is in love with her college friend Kunal. Meanwhile, after Malini’s mother tortures Imlie physically by hitting a tube light on her head, she decides to leave for Pagdandia thinking Adi cheated on her. Adi reveals the truth to Malini that Imlie is his first wife. Malini comes to Pagdandia with a name Kalpana and discovers that Imlie is her half-sister.
Adi and Imlie reunite and Aditya convinces Satyakam and Meethi to get married. Kunal Chauhan, a criminal lawyer fights for Satyakam’s case and is also in charge of Adi and Malini’s divorce case. Kunal is in love with Malini and she also had little feelings for him. Imlie learns about her father and refuses to accept Dev and tells Satyakam will always be her father. The Tripathi family splashes water on her, looking down on her because of her illegitimate status and taunting her. Adi always stood up for her, but Imlie refuses to stay in his room until the family’s acceptance. He is like a mentor figure to her, who taught her English, helped in her studies, gave her courage, life lessons, not to feel inferior in front of others and supported her. She finally expresses her feelings to him that she loves and idealises him. She wants to be a journalist, after seeing Adi’s works. But Malini couldn’t see them happy after a point of time, thus decides to get Aditya back.
Malini stops the divorce proceedings. She and Anu put on a fake suicide drama and Aditya takes her back to his house with Imlie’s permission. Imlie takes care of Malini. But Malini tries to break Aditya and Imlie’s relationship. Imlie discovers Malini’s intentions and warns Aditya, but he didn’t believe him. He also discovered Kunal’s truth and this makes him believe in her much more. Adi and Imlie’s post-marriage rituals were happening when Malini informs Satyakam that Aditya is cheating on Imlie with her. When he comes to confirm he sees them close and shoots Aditya. Imlie saves Aditya and is bitten by a snake. After they recover, Adi demands Satyakam to be jailed. But after hearing the truth from Satyakam, Imlie says Malini also needs to be jailed as she is the person who instigated him. Adi didn’t believe and refused to do so. Imlie escapes Satyakam saying Malini should also be punished, then she will bring him back.
From there, they develop trust issues. Malini gets intimate with Aditya by intoxicating him. Imlie is devastated and broken after knowing Aditya and Malini spent night together. The family asks Imlie to go away for their family respect in society, but Adi asks her to not leave. Imlie sees her saree burnt to realise that Malini has used her saree to spend the night with Aditya. She returns and files a case against Malini for getting intimate against Aditya’s will and Kunal comes to support Imlie. She finds video evidence and shows him. He is shattered as he couldn’t believe his best friend could do this to him. During submitting the evidence to the court, the video file was found deleted and the case gets dismissed. Adi tells he deleted the video as Malini is pregnant. Imlie is completely heartbroken hearing this. He further tells the false story told by Anu (Malini’s mom) that she intoxicated and dressed up Malini as Imlie and sent her to his room.
Imlie decides to let Malini stay in the house because she thinks the baby should not live a life like her without her father’s name. Malini wants Imlie to go out from Adi’s life. The Tripathi family slowly accepts Imlie as their daughter-in-law. But Adi and Imlie’s relationship is at stake due to trust issues and misunderstandings because of Malini. Finally, Adi and Malini are divorced. But she does various things to separate Imlie and Adi, and asusual, Adi trusts Malini. When Imlie asks Adi to send Malini home, he refuses as Malini is pregnant and dismisses the request saying she is insecure. As a final stroke, Malini shots herself and frames Imlie, but Satyakam takes the blame and goes to jail. Malini demands to send Imlie out of the house. When Adi asks Imlie what happened, she loses all her patience and ends their relationship by burning her nuptial chain and removing the sindoor which she considered as Goddess Sita’s blessings and leaves Tripathi house choosing self-respect above her husband.
Aryan Singh Rathore is a businessman, who comes as the CEO of Bhaskar Times. He misunderstands that Adi is responsible for his brother-in-law’s death, thus wanting revenge from him. Imlie stays at a girls hostel. Although Adi gives the internship offer letter to Imlie, she tears it and eventually gets the same from Aryan. Imlie leaves the hostel and she stays at the office at night. While she was teased by some boys, Aryan rescues her and makes Imlie his paying guest. Although Aryan was rude to Imlie in the start, he likes her bubbly nature and gets inspired by her. Adi misunderstands Imlie and Aryan’s relationship. Soon, during their wedding anniversary, Adi sees Imlie and Aryan in a hotel room, and misunderstand them. Malini sends divorce papers to Adi replacing them with a letter from Imlie. Adi is heartbroken thinking Imlie wants to leave him for Aryan. He ends the relationship. Imlie is left devastated, where Aryan supports her. Adi misunderstands Aryan’s words and announces his marriage to Malini making Imlie sign the divorce papers.
After the divorce, Aryan laid moral support to Imlie. Adi marries Malini and Imlie decides to move on even if it takes days, months or years. She and Aryan shares a supreme relationship of friendship and becomes comfortable with each other. With Aryan’s help Imlie finally manages to expose Malini’s misdeeds. Aditya becomes shattered upon seeing this and apologizes to Imlie, but she ignores him. Aditya throws Malini out of the house and sends Anu to jail, releasing Satyakam.
Aditya unintentionally reports a stormy weather as clear leading Aryan and Arpita getting injured in the storm. He then learns about Arvind and Aryan’s revenge and tries to warn Imlie that Aryan is using her against him, but she refuses to believe. However, when Aryan publicly confronts Aditya, Imlie learns the truth. When she confronts Aryan about the same, he refuses to answer her questions. Heartbroken, she leaves his house. Aryan who wishes her well being arranges a place for her to stay without her knowing. Then he frames Aditya for false weather reporting and bans his journalism license. Seeing the Tripathis condition, Imlie begs Aryan to save her family. He then puts forth the condition of marrying her but she in turn puts a condition that the marriage would be fake and should be on paper only as she refused to betray her religious beliefs. When Aditya learns about the same, he demands the wedding in front of his eyes, as a punishment of hurting Imlie. Aryan agrees to it while Imlie lashes out at him for the same.He challenges her to stop the wedding. Aryan’s Badi Maa Neela and his childhood friend Preeta (Baby Doll) enters with an intention to takeover Rathore’s wealth by stopping the wedding and by doing a brideswap. Imlie realizes their real intentions and tries to alert Aryan which creates drama during the marriage ceremony. During the phera Aryan takes six pheras and leaves the seventh to Imlie’s choice, as she tries to go away she is stopped by Meethi who tells her to marry Aryan by saying Imlie is “indebted” to her. Imlie finally returns and takes the seventh phera and cuts the ties with Meethi misunderstanding her intentions. Imlie and Aryan finally get married.
After the marriage, Neela actively tries to break the relationship between Aryan and Imlie with the help of Preeta in several occasions. However, Aryan shows his trust and support towards Imlie which slowly shifts her opinion in him and questions his real intentions in marrying her. She then becomes interested in Arvind’s case and started to interrogate the past incident as a reporter with the intention of freeing Aryan from his scarred past and give a closure to Arpita and Narmada.
In search of the real culprits of Arvind’s death, she finds evidence to prove that Aditya was a pawn of a foul play done by Seth Purandas – a business rival of Arvind and killed him for messing with his business. She records Seth’s conversation with the help of Madhav who’s a fellow villager she met during her search. She tries to hand over the evidence to Aryan who’s at a beauty pageant sponsored by Bhaskar Times but Seth’s goons who had followed her set a bomb in a trophy to stop her. Aryan and Imlie handle the bomb situation successfully but then Imlie gets kidnapped. Aryan follows the goons and learns the truth behind his brother-in-law’s death which left him devastated and he loses control over the situation that he and Imlie are in as the goons try to kill her in the same manner as Arvind. However, Aryan overcomes his fears by Imlie’s calling and manages to free them. Aditya also reaches the place with police and helps them. Aryan apologise to Aditya and his family for his impulsive actions which leads Aditya to also apologise to Aryan for not investigating Arvind’s case properly before reporting. Out of guilt, Aryan lets Imlie go from his and his family’s lives. However, she decides to return to Aryan and Aditya leaves the country.
The next storm in Imlie and Aryan’s lives comes as the marriage of Arpita. Neela brings a proposal for Arpita when she heard Imlie discussing Sundar’s feelings with her. Though Imlie manages to open Aryan’s eyes to the necessity of having a companion for his sister, he strongly opposes the idea of it being with Sundar as he thinks about her wellbeing. Hence he agrees to meet the family Neela proposed.
Imlie started disliking Uday from the moment she saw him rudely speaking to a lady on the road. Later, she learns that he was set up by Neela to marry Arpita. She tries to speak to Aryan about it however, he was not ready to judge Uday due to his experience with Adi. Hence she tries to bring up the incompatibility between Arpita and Uday through a cooking competition where Aryan ends up cooking for Imlie. This incident left Aryan wondering what happened between Imlie and Amma and also fixing the engagement of Arpita and Uday. On the date of the engagement, Imlie leaves the Rathore mansion after disagreeing with Aryan’s decision and excluding her from his family matters. She then learns that Sundar is leaving the city. While she was trying to stop Sundar, she again meets the lady who was with Uday when they first met and learns that she is his mother. It’s later revealed that he has been mistreating his parents after illegally acquiring their properties and Imlie brings this up in front of everyone present at the engagement party. Aryan immediately stops the engagement and apologizes to Imlie. Heartbroken, Arpita tries to take some pills and Sundar ends up saving her. As Aryan and Narmada realize Arpita also has developed feelings for Sundar, they agree to their union.
Imlie realises her mistake of breaking ties with Meethi during her wedding and becomes emotional. Aryan consoles her. During their discussion, the window of their room cracks, leading them to run outside to find nothing but Aryan manages to get a glimpse of her thoughts about their marriage from Imlie. On the day that the wedding dates are fixed, Sundar’s mother, Nanda Prasad comes and insults Arpita while Imlie smartly controls the situation. Nanda was called by Neela to spoil the nuptials of Sundar and Arpita. This disagreement with his mother leads Arpita to tell Sundar that if Nanda won’t agree to their union, she won’t proceed with the marriage.
After assessing Arpita’s wealth, Nanda agrees to the marriage and requests a dowry ignoring Imlie’s warning. During the marriage preparations, Aryan receives a flower bouquet which he misunderstands as Imlie’s doing. He questions the same from her which she makes fun of. Despite all these incidents their relationship grows and Aryan also manages to verbalize his feelings with Arpita on Imlie’s encouragement. During Arpita and Sundar’s wedding, Imlie discloses the dowry situation and addresses it.
On their way to drop Meeti at the bus stand after the wedding, Imlie meets Jyoti who happened to be a college friend of Aryan. Jyoti harbors feelings toward Aryan and shows an obsessive behavior inside but a sweet demeanor outside to the people. After getting know her friendship with Aryan, Imlie invites her to Rathore’s mansion. Jyoti also tries to come between Aryan and Imlie. She tries to kill her former husband’s sister figure Nargiz whom she used to take divorce from him because Nargiz was planning to alert Aryan about Jyoti’s intentions and Imlie witnessed the accident. Devastated, Imlie goes home and seeks comfort from Aryan. He assures her that he’ll take care of Nargiz. Next, they both face a fire in their bedroom – a fire set by Neela to harm Imlie. Aryan reaches their room and takes the necessary actions to save Imlie. After being contacted by Madhav, Imlie tries to leave the house to collect some important evidence needed for an article, they both have been working on. Worried for Imlie as she is planning to leave without getting any rest, Aryan follows her and gets shot by a goon. At the hospital where everyone was trying to find blood for Aryan, Neela, Preeta, and Jyoti cooperate to remove Imlie from Aryan’s life.
When Aryan gains consciousness he immediately seeks Imlie and learns that she left the hospital due to Narmada’s ill behaviour. Ignoring the protests of Narmada, he goes after Imlie and finds her having a breakdown as she believes that she is not a suitable partner for him. He however manages to console her and they return home. Narmada demands Imlie to quit her job and Aryan speaks against it. Arpita encourages Aryan to share his true feelings with Imlie as it will give her the courage to deal with Narmada’s change of behaviour better. With the help of Jyo, Aryan takes Imlie on a date – to a place where he built a treehouse for her. Before confessing their feelings, Imlie falls from the treehouse as Jyo secretly cuts a pillar to stop them from sharing their feelings. Aryan tries to regain Imlie’s consciousness and gets scared as she doesn’t respond to his emergency treatments which leads him to share his feelings and Imlie regains her consciousness. As it starts raining they find a secluded place where Imlie reciprocates his feelings and they spend the night there. The next morning they return to their place to be questioned by Narmada.
Later, Imlie becomes pregnant. After a lot of turn of events – the circumstances created by Jyoti to separate Imlie and Aryan, Imlie manages to expose Jyoti’s misdeeds in front of Aryan with the help of Harinder-Jyoti’s ex-husband, Sundar and Arpita. Aryan breaks down in guilt for getting influenced by Jyoti. Both of them share an emotional moment and make promises for their future.
On their way back home, they see a baby left alone. They take the baby home and try to find her parents. Imlie starts calling her Gudiya as she unknowingly relates her life to the baby. Malini enters as a successful Dean in a college and reveals to be holding grudges against the people who gave similar backgrounds as Imlie. Neela, who is against keeping Gudiya in the house, arranges for some ladies to disguise themselves as NGO members and take Gudiya away. Imlie and Aryan get to know it and manage to save Gudiya and the other babies taken from their parents and get all the men arrested. Malini enters the Rathore mansion and reveals that Gudiya is her and Aditya’s daughter who was missing. She accuses Imlie of stealing her baby and trying to get the things that belong to her like in the past. Later Malini reveals to Imlie that she doesn’t care about her daughter and kept her to use as a pawn to take revenge on Imlie. Imlie with Aryan plans to bring Malini’s truth and get custody. Imlie invites Malini and Anu for puja at Rathore’s to execute their plan. Malini however uses the invitation in her favour and manages to harm Imlie in front of Aryan’s eyes. Due to that, Imlie suffers from a miscarriage. Aryan and Imlie both blame each other for their loss and part ways. Imlie leaves the house and finds Gudiya in a temple where Malini has abandoned her. Imlie takes Gudiya to Pagdandiya and lives with her mom.
Five Years Later
Aryan is still grieving for losing their baby and harbours hatred toward Imlie and lives in a self-destructive way. Imlie lives in Pagdandiya with Cheeni and is shown to be fighting against social injustice as an Independent journalist. She is also shown mourning their loss under the facade of being resilient to the incident 5 years back.
Malini who happens to own significant shares of Bhaskar Times and publishes an article against Pagdandiya by taking advantage of Aryan’s disinterest. This harms the newspaper’s reputation as Imlie telecasts a program defending the villagers unaware of the company which defamed them. Angry, Aryan reaches Pagdandiya to solve the matter where he ended up saving Cheeni who got kidnapped. They immediately form a bond unknowing of their connection.
