Venkatam (Prakash Raj) has been released from jail in 1948. He is only being escorted for two days (the reason not revealed) back to his hometown of Kanchipuram. He is being transported under the custody of two policemen on a bus from the jail. As the journey takes place, Venkatam recalls his past symbolically as several events that occur in the bus remind him of his past.

Venkatam is a silk weaver in the town of Kanchivaram, and has just recently got married (with Sriya Reddy). He had vowed once that he will only wed a woman wearing a silk saree, but had to settle for normalcy as he unable to garner enough savings to buy one.

But soon after, Venkatam's brother-in-law suffers losses in his business, and tells Venkatam that he will have to abandon Venkatam's sister because he wouldn't afford to take care of her. In desperation to preserve his sister's life and dignity, Venkatam hands over his life savings to his brother-in-law, leaving his silk saree ambitions in tatters. A fair happens in the town, Venkatam and his family decide to go but soon Annam (Sriya Reddy) begins to vomit blood. Later that night she dies in Venkatam's arms when he shows her his daughter's silk saree. Soon after, a writer visits the town and asks for a place to stay- which Venkatam arranges in a friend's house. It is slowly revealed that the writer is a communist with an agenda. He promotes the idea of equality to the silk weavers after learning about their poor pay and their inability to access the very product that they make. By time, Venkatam alongside fellow weavers embrace this idea and participate actively in street theatre mocking their Zamindar, who employs all of them. After the writer is hunted down by police and killed (Communism was illegal at that time in India), Venkatam takes control, and under him, the weavers submit a petition demanding pay increase and other initiatives.

However, to his shock, his friend's son (with whom his daughter is in love with) returns from the armed forces one day, and informs that the British are defeating Germans in the war, meaning that relations with the Communists have deteriorated. At the same time, he also wants to marry Venkatam's daughter before he is asked to return to the battlefield, leaving Venkatam perplexed as he has to fulfill the promise of sending her off with a silk saree. With only half of the saree finished so far, he suddenly goes against his own words and asks all weavers to rejoin work immediately, and is branded a traitor. At work, he secretly smuggles strings of silks out of the temple in which he works to help him finish the saree in time. But after a while, he gets caught during smuggling, which causes him to get beaten up and sent to jail.

The story returns to present day, where it is revealed that his daughter has slipped and fell into a well, leaving her paralysed, with nobody to take care of her (Venkatam's wife died due to injuries sustained during a stampede by the villagers to see the zamindar's new motorcar, when his daughter was still young). He asks his sister to take her in, but his brother-in-law says it will hurt his dignity to have a thief's daughter stay in his house. Not knowing what to do, Venkatam poisons his own daughter and she dies shortly thereafter, ending her suffering.

As her dead body lay in front of the house, Venkatam opens up his house and finds the half-woven silk saree he had before. He takes the cloth and uses that silk to cover his dead daughter's body, in resemblance to what Venkatam said at the beginning of the film (at his father's death, Venkatam complained that despite his father being a silk weaver his whole life, he do not have a single silk cloth to cover his body, apart from a small piece tied at his toes as per tradition). He becomes mentally unstable (shown by his attempts at covering his daughter's face and leg with the half-woven silk saree). The films ends with a freeze frame shot of the mentally unstable Venkatam laughing towards the camera after covering his daughter's body with silk, before credits reveal how communism had become a forefront movement in India.

• Prakash Raj - Venkatam
• Shriya Reddy - Annam
• Shammu - Thamarai
• Vimal - Rangan
• Geetha Vijayan - Vengadam's sister
• George Maryan
• Mousumi Saha
• Vinodhini Vaidyanathan

The film was initially announced to be made in Malayalam as Kancheepuram in 2001.

• National Film Award
  • Best Film
  • Best Actor: Prakash Raj^[4]
• Filmfare Awards South
  • Best Director (Tamil): Priyadarshan
  • Best Actor (Tamil): Prakash Raj
  • Best Supporting Actress (Tamil): Shammu
• Others
  • Vijay Award for Best Actor - Prakash Raj
  • Vijay Award for Best Debut Actor - Vimal

• • Best Actor - Prakash Raj
  • Best Actress - Sriya Reddy