Kalyani, a poor labourer, strives hard to make a living and provide for Chellamma, his innocent eight-year-old daughter.

An independent straight forward woman, comes across an surprisingly honest guy in her life, the circumstances life puts them in and how they deal with it, forms the crux of the story. Portrays the city’s developing modern culture and the true colors of the different characters in raw fashion.

Prabhakar (Jiiva) is a Tamil teacher in a private school in west Mambalam area of Chennai, who leads a lonely life in a lodge. He is frustrated and even tries to commit suicide, in a system where knowing your mother tongue and teaching it is looked down upon by a society craving for material benefits and imbalance in pay structure.
The narration is mostly in a series of flashbacks. Prabhakar, for no fault of his, is at the receiving end, terrorized by cops and on the run after killing a railway booking clerk in a fit of rage. He roams all around the country and joins some saadhus, high on pot and also grows his hair long and keeps a shaggy beard. Finally he wants to exorcise the devils within and at gun point kidnaps a television anchor Yuvaan-Suang(Karunas), who records his life story, where he confesses to killing 22 people in cold blood.

A poor laborer Kalyani (Ram) is devoted to his young daughter Chellamma (Baby Sadhana), but the child has problems at school with her studies, classmates, and teachers. Kalyani wants Chellamma to be happy, no matter what. Kalyani is a man who toils pretty hard to meet both ends, thereby trying not to live in his father’s (Poo Ramu) shade, but is forced to. Chellama is a sweet, angelic girl who fares below average in the class but is all chirpy and gleeful when she is with her father. Without a proper job and an income the tension that prevails in the house forces Kalyani to take up a job far away from the reach of Chellamma. ‘Thanga Meengal’ is a coming-of-age story of an unfit father struggling to make ends meet, told through the eyes of his eight-year-old daughter.[9] The film offers a critique of primary education in Tamil Nadu and makes poignant observations through social commentary.

A single father tries to raise his daughter, who has cerebral palsy, even as she is beginning to wake up to her sexuality.