Rahul (Shahrukh Khan) and the tomboy Anjali (Kajol) are students at St. Xavier College. They are the best of friends.

Then Tina, (Rani Mukerji), the principal's daughter, enrolls at St. Xavier. She is beautiful, feminine, and sophisticated -- the antithesis of Anjali. Rahul falls hard for Tina, just as Anjali is realizing that she has some feelings for Rahul. She awakens to those feelings just in time to see that it is hopeless. She leaves college suddenly, vowing to forget all.

Tina and Rahul marry and have a child -- whom they name Anjali. Tina dies in childbirth, but previously writes a series of eight letters. Every year, on Anjali's birthday, she is given a letter and hears her mother's loving wishes for her. In the eighth and last letter, the little girl is told about her namesake. Where Rahul had been blind, Tina had noticed the older Anjali's change of heart, and pitied her deeply. If Rahul hasn't remarried, perhaps his first love could be the mother that the young Anjali needs and wants.

Rahul has refused to remarry; he has thrown himself into his work with the intensity of desperation. Anjali Jr. believes that the older Anjali can make her beloved father happy again, and decides to help her father reclaim his lost paramour. She soon recruits her doting grandmother (Rahul's mother played by Farida Jalal) and grandfather (Tina's father played by Anupam Kher) as accomplices.

The unlikely conspirators locate Rahul's old flame and contrive to make Rahul and Anjali meet again. Rahul soon finds old feelings reviving. However, there is a complication. Anjali has bowed to her family's wishes and is engaged to another man, Aman (played by Salman Khan). Complications ensue, but all ends well as Aman steps aside to let the fated couple marry at last.