Thenali (2000): Cast & Plot

Thenali Soman Kamal Haasan is a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee who travels to Chennai seeking psychiatric care after enduring phobias that linger from the Sri Lankan civil war. The treatment path he encounters is shaped by a pair of doctors, Dr. Panchabhootam Delhi Ganesh and his assistant, who feel overshadowed by the rising fame of Dr. Kailash Jayaram. Their jealousy nudges them to divert Thenali toward Kailash, betting that a failed therapy would ease Kailash’s ascent in the field. With a clinical plan partly driven by rivalry, the scene shifts from the clinic to a vacation setting as Kailash travels with his wife, Jalaja Devayani, and their two children to his home in Kodaikanal, a place where therapy would supposedly begin only after the family’s time away.