Gayatri 2018

Dasari Sivaji, a dedicated stage artist, runs Sarada Sadan, an organization aimed at giving a helping hand to destitute children. One day, his path crosses with a girl named Gayatri when he rescues her from goons who tried to kidnap her. The moment is strange and touching: Gayatri’s phone screen bears the image of his late wife, Sharada, and Sivaji realizes that Gayatri is somehow his long-lost daughter. This revelation widens the circle of memory and duty around him, pulling him toward a past he had kept buried.

At Gayatri’s college graduation, she speaks with blunt honesty about her father: she doesn’t know what he looks like, but she knows he is someone who once paid a cruel price for his happiness, having been sold for just 1,000 rupees to buy alcohol. The words sting Sivaji and drive him to retreat in a temple, where he seeks shelter from the storm of his emotions. In the meantime, Sivaji’s circle pieces together the truth: a trusted friend, Prasad, tells Gayatri that Sivaji is indeed her father. The revelation is reinforced when Prasad hands Gayatri a diary that uncovers Sivaji’s long-buried past.

The diary traces Sivaji’s early life: an orphan who finds his calling in acting and builds a life and love around the family he starts with Sharada. Their happiness is shattered when Sharada falls gravely ill with pelvic cancer, forcing Sivaji to scramble for money to save her. A plan is hatched through the aid of a friend named Giri, who suggests a dangerous shortcut: if Sivaji could spend two days in jail, a bail payment would cover the treatment. But the plan spins out of control, and Sivaji ends up serving two weeks in jail. The truth that surfaces is devastating: Sharada and their unborn child have died. Sivaji’s world collapses, and in a fall that seems inevitable, he attempts to throw himself in front of a train. He is saved by [Giri], who is killed in the attempt, but before dying, Giri reveals the baby—Gayatri—survived and grew up in Ramanujam Orphanage.

Back in the present, Gayatri and Prasad search for Sivaji, but they find him only at the temple, where he is captured by henchmen who work for Sivaji’s lookalike, the dangerous [Patel]. In a twist of fate, Patel is arrested and sentenced to death for burning a hospital, a crime Sivaji is eventually implicated in. In prison, Sivaji tells the jailer, Simhachalam, that he is the real Sivaji and not Patel, though Simhachalam seems to know the truth already. He later learns that Patel’s death sentence hinged on the testimony of a girl—Gayatri herself.

Patel, posing as Sivaji, visits Gayatri’s home and receives her apology for the earlier misunderstanding, which she offers under the impression that he is her father. Meanwhile, journalist Shreshta Jayaram informs Sivaji that Patel has returned to the house disguised as him and has even murdered Prasad. In a sharper truth-telling interview, Shreshta reveals to Gayatri that Sivaji is behind bars, waiting for Patel’s fate, and that Patel has stolen Sivaji’s identity to be her father. Gayatri, however, feels misled and brands Shreshta’s accusation as an impostor’s claim.

As the drama intensifies in jail, Sivaji expresses a simple, human wish to witness his own acting once more, a wish that many people rally to fulfill by pressing Patel to honor it. Patel - still masquerading as Sivaji - is pressed to consider Sivaji’s dying wish. The public response to the incident becomes the turning wheel: Patel fulfills the wish, and the crowd greets him with applause. The tension between truth and perception continues to ripple through Gayatri’s life as she and Sivaji finally reconnect.

The pivotal reunion occurs when Gayatri confronts the truth and reconnects with the man she always believed to be her father, Sivaji. [Simhachalam] remains a quiet observer of the changing loyalties, recognizing Sivaji’s genuine humanitarian nature and deciding that Patel must be held accountable. As Sivaji and Gayatri step away from the jail, the fight between Sivaji and Patel erupts again, this time with law enforcement unable to separate the two men in the heat of battle. In a decisive moment, Gayatri shoots Patel, bringing a brutal closure to the conflict. The film closes on Sivaji and Gayatri leaving the jail, their bond sealed by the trials they endured and the hope that guided them back to each other.