Pariyerum Perumal

Pariyerum Perumal, alias Pariyan, is a youth hailing from Puliyankulam village near Tirunelveli, and belongs to an oppressed caste. The film begins with the murder of his beloved black dog, Karuppi (transl. Blackie) due to caste hegemony.

Pariyan moves on to secure a seat at Government Law College, Tirunelveli, where he wishes to become a lawyer like B. R. Ambedkar. He meets Jothi Mahalakshmi “Jo”, a naive girl from Ambasamudram who takes it upon herself to teach Pariyan English. She eventually falls for his innocence and honesty. This newfound friendship irks Sankaralingam, a fellow law student and Jo’s cousin. He awaits a chance to teach a lesson to Pariyan and establish his caste superiority. He does so while the blissfully unaware Jo invites Pariyan to a family wedding.

At the wedding that he was invited to, Pariyan is almost beaten to death by Sankaralingam and his friends, and they also urinate on him. It is stopped, and Pariyan is warned by Jo’s father to stay out of her life. Jo, unaware of all this, berates Pariyan the next day for not attending her sister’s wedding as he was the only one from her college who she had invited.

Pariyan, who becomes upset the next day, drinks alcohol and attends the class, which leads him to the principal’s room. When he is asked to bring his father, he bribes a person to be his father, and the man does the job successfully. Another day, Pariyan’s teacher tries to reconcile Pariyan with Jo, but Pariyan notes that Jo gave an invitation-only to him, making it clear that he treats her only as his friend, which infuriates her. On the same day, he sits on Sankaralingam’s bench. The latter gets infuriated as he does not see Pariyan as his equal, pushes Pariyan into the ladies’ toilet, and locks the door. This gets Pariyan in trouble once again, and Pariyan is called to the principal’s room. Pariyan is again asked to bring his father. This time, he brings his real father, a folk dancer in drag clothing.

The principal understands Pariyan’s innocence and asks him to be brave and continue to fight like this. As Pariyan comes out of the principal’s room, he finds his father brutally hazed by Sankaralingam and his mates, and they pull Pariyan’s father’s dhoti. Pariyan’s father runs out of college half-naked, followed by Sankaralingam and his group, and Pariyan runs after them. Pariyan takes his father to a hospital for medical treatment. Meanwhile, Jo’s father realises that his daughter is madly in love with Pariyan. Fearing humiliation and ostracisation from his caste if his daughter elopes with someone from a lower caste, he hires “Thatha Maistry”, an ageing assassin who murders people to protect the honour of the people of his caste. Maistry reveals that he looks at his work as a divine ordinance and promises that the day that he is unsuccessful, he will kill himself.

Maistry and Pariyan know each other, and Maistry even offers to fix the problem by talking to Pariyan. Pariyan, who is by his father’s bedside at the hospital, contemplates taking revenge, but his mother asks him not to do so. She reminds him that humiliation and oppression are things that they have dealt with their whole lives, and that violence will not fix anything. He is informed that Jo is waiting in the hospital for him. An emotional Jo makes Pariyan realise how important he is to her, and though she loves him, she asks him to be the same old Pariyan, who was very friendly with her. Pariyan makes a promise to be like that.

Maistry asks for a ride on Pariyan’s cycle and tries to kill him by tying Pariyan on a railway track, in the same way that Karuppi was killed, but Pariyan escapes, which leads to a fight between Maistry and Pariyan. Pariyan realises that he was sent by Jo’s father and Sankaralingam. He beats Sankaralingam and others brutally. He then tells Jo’s father that the life he is living is a gift from Pariyan because if Jo becomes aware of the activities of her father, she will not spare him. Pariyan asks him to stop harassing him and leaves. Maistry, having failed to kill his mark for the first time, commits suicide on the railway track.

Jo, who remains completely oblivious to the violence around her, brings her father to meet Pariyan, and as she goes to buy tea for them, Jo’s father asks for an apology for his behaviour. He speaks cordially to Pariyan, who replies that as long as he remains the same and expects Pariyan to remain a dog, nothing will change.

Last Updated: September 20, 2025 at 11:47