This film has the water scarcity that the city faces severely as its backdrop. It revolves around three interesting characters. ‘Baskar’, who takes up desalination of seawater as his ambition; His childhood friend ‘Archana’ who later turns out as his spouse; ‘Madan’, who makes pivot changes in others life with his sheer intelligence. What happens when these three meet up? How these characters use their brainpower variously is narrated sophisticatedly. How a young chap with such an ambition arising from a third world nation triumphs is told with an interesting screenplay.

Thilak (Vijay Sethupathi) is a news anchor who works for Zen One TV, which is run by Kalyan (Akashdeep Saighal), a corrupt and unethical media baron who uses blatant sensationalism to gain TRP and is closely associated with Dheeran Maniarasu (Bose Venkat), a corrupt and powerful politician. Kalyan ensures that his channel does not report anything negatively about Dheeran and receives kickbacks in return. Also working for Zen One is Malar (Madonna Sebastian), Thilak’s ex-girlfriend. Though Malar avoids Thilak initially, she soon realises her feelings for him, and they get back together.

Murugappa ‘Munaruna’ (Dhanush) is a Tamil worker in 1960s Burma. His friend Saamuda falls in love with Mallika, but Mallika loves Munaruna. Munaruna saves Samudra (Amyra Dastur), the daughter of a Burmese army general, from a Ferris wheel accident and they fall in love. When Mallika learns about this, she is devastated and marries Saamuda. The Burmese general disapproves of the union between Munaruna and Samudra, and revokes the privileges that the Tamil immigrants had until then. Violence breaks out and the Tamil nationals flee Burma. Munaruna and Samudra join the refugees on a ship with Saamuda and Mallika. When Samudra’s father comes looking for her, Mallika spitefully reveals where they are hiding. As Samudra and Munaruna try to escape by diving into the ocean, Munaruna is shot and killed. Samudra handcuffs herself to Munaruna and drowns with him after promising to be together forever.