Teddy 2020

Srividya Purushottaman, known as Sri, is a college student who helps someone after an accident. In the process, her hand is injured and she is rushed to a hospital where she is given intravenous drugs to induce an artificial coma. When Sri wakes, she learns that her body is still alive but her soul has somehow transferred into a teddy bear. This strange turn of events sets a quiet, eerie tone for the story that follows.

In parallel, Shivanarayanan (Shiva) is an unemployed graduate who lives with the burden of an eidetic memory and OCD, which makes him learn things rapidly but also adds friction to his daily life. His mother, Lakshmi, and his friend accompany him to a session with Dr. Priya Gopal, a psychiatrist, yet the meeting yields little relief. One night, Shiva steps in to rescue a teenager from a gang of goons, and it is during this crisis that Sri, now inhabiting the teddy bear, sees and encounters him. At first, Shiva thinks it might be a dream, but the evidence soon convinces him that what he saw was real.

Sri reveals to Shiva that she needs to see her boyfriend Rishi, but the revelation that Rishi is a fraud shatters her. After Shiva and his friend Ramachandran bring Sri to her home, he discovers Sri’s father, Purushottaman, attempting suicide. Shiva’s intervention saves him, and Sri’s mother begs them to locate her daughter. Making a solemn promise, Shiva vows to find Sri and bring her body back.

The search drives them to uncover the body’s whereabouts and the hospital’s misdeeds. To track the body, Shiva encases Sri in a parcel bearing a barcode and equips her with a smartphone to monitor where the package is moved. The enigmatic parcel eventually lands in Azerbaijan. There, Sri borrows a beggar’s phone, takes a selfie outside a restaurant, and discreetly sends the image to Shiva via Facebook. Determined to bring Sri home, Shiva sells all his shares to fund the journey and travels abroad, where he soon crosses paths with Karthik, a local who has been working in Azerbaijan for three years. Together, Shiva and Sri reconnect, and Karthik becomes convinced by Shiva’s earnest account of events.

The trio follows a trail that leads them to a brothel where Sri’s body may lie. Sri recognizes a tattoo on a courier or delivery person that matches a clue she has seen before, bolstering Shiva’s suspicions. Their investigation exposes a vast medical scam: a plan to abduct people, induce coma, and harvest their organs. The mastermind behind this operation is Dr. Varadharajan, who runs an illegal organ-trafficking scheme. When they seek police help, they are able to pursue the case through legal channels and eventually bring the truth to light.

As the truth comes to light, Sri regains consciousness, and the teddy bear’s soul departs from her. Yet she struggles to remember the heroic efforts of Shiva and the peril they endured together. The pair return to India, where Sri is reunited with her parents. A year later, Sri begins to follow Shiva and takes photographs of him, signaling the birth of a deep, enduring connection. They marry and start a life together, though Sri eventually discovers that when she falls asleep, her soul continues to travel back to the teddy, continuing an otherworldly balance between bodies and hearts.