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

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.

Pichaimoorthy (Ram), a barber, being forced by his wife, Subathra (Poorna), to accompany her and their two kids, to meet her brother, Raghu, who has eloped with a girl from an effluent family. They need to get the two of them married before the girl’s parents interfere. However, en route, Pichai gets into a skirmish with Manga (Mysskin), a gangster who is out on parole and has to go to prison by that evening. An enraged Manga swears that he will chop off the former’s limb by sundown. Pichai runs all over the city to escape from Mange and his gang. Can Pichai survive the day? The film ends with an inspirational message that knife must be used only to cut the umbilical cord between a mother&baby and not to harm people.