The film opens with Ganesh as Manja, imprisoned, reflecting on a childhood romance with Bhama as Shyloo that grows deeper as they age. Though Shyloo's mother initially promises to secure their marriage, she later changes course and arranges for Shyloo to wed a wealthy young man. This turn stirs a fierce resolve in Manja, who threatens to kill her if forced into a life apart from him. He ends up in custody and serves a 30-day prison sentence, a harsh reminder of how love collides with social expectations.
A day before his release, Shyloo’s mother accelerates the marriage plan, and Manja makes a bold escape from prison. As Suchendra Prasad and Rangayana Raghu escort Manja in handcuffs, Shyloo chooses to accompany him, sharing the hope that they can marry once he is free. The couple’s flight from confinement begins a trek filled with obstacles and unpredictable turns, testing their devotion at every step.
Their journey is punctuated by a series of misadventures that force them to improvise and persevere. An errant elephant lurks as a temporary pursuer, and a wrong turn leaves them stranded, eventually guiding them toward the Indian state of Kerala. Along the way, the duo discovers new landscapes and the contrasts between their worlds, while the weight of their decision to marry looms larger than any single obstacle.
Back home, Bhaskar—the officer whose formal duties keep him tethered to the law—finds himself torn. He becomes increasingly furious with Manja, not because of personal malice alone, but because the chase for love robs him of the chance to celebrate Deepavali with his own family. A parallel thread follows Bhaskar’s wife Sudha and her brothers, who push him to return to their hometown for the festival, highlighting the friction between duty, family, and the desires that pull a man in two directions.
The story takes a turn of mercy and vulnerability when Bhaskar saves Manja from a freak bus accident. The act of rescuing someone who is not a legal ward but a friend at heart softens Bhaskar’s stance toward his young companion, and a quiet bond forms between them. With this shift, the quartet—Manja, Shyloo, Bhaskar, and Ramaiah—begins the long journey back toward the hometown, each man increasingly aware of the costs of pursuing a dream that collides with other people’s expectations.
Bhaskar’s promise becomes a guiding light: he vows to secure Manja’s release within two days and to arrange the marriage as soon as that release happens. Ramaiah, ever the protector, offers Shyloo shelter in his own home, a gesture meant to keep her safe until the wedding day. Yet Bhaskar then asks Ramaiah to step back and let Shyloo stay under Bhaskar’s roof, hoping the arrangement will shield her from danger and preserve the plan for the next day’s wedding.
When they reach Bhaskar’s home, Sudha’s wrath erupts once more. She confronts the group and accuses Shyloo of an illicit relationship with Bhaskar, a charge that inflames tensions and shakes the fragile equilibrium they have tried to maintain. Bhaskar’s anger surfaces again, and his rebuke drives Sudha to leave the shared space in distress, underscoring how quickly trust can fracture under pressure.
The following morning, as the trio travels toward the court, they stumble upon a lifeless body on the railway tracks. The discovery shocks them to their core: the body is Shyloo. The tragedy reveals a brutal sequence: Sudha’s brothers descended on their home and beat Shyloo, violently concluding her life and casting her body onto the tracks. Manja collapses in grief, crying out as he leaps toward an oncoming train and dies as well, a poignant moment that marks the collapse of their world.
Consumed by guilt and anger, Bhaskar abandons his vocation and returns to his wife’s home, where a chilling act of violence unfolds. He kills Sudha and her brothers with a sickle, a culmination of the brutality that has haunted the characters’ choices. In a final act of reckoning, he surrenders to the authorities and accepts a twenty-year prison sentence, spending those years in a cell that echoes Manja’s own confinement, a stark reminder of how lives can spiral into irreversible tragedy when love and duty collide.
