The film starts in the 1990s. A young Shiva (Jiiva) is trained in the ancient Indian martial art Kalaripayattu by his grandfather (Prakash Raj) to be bold and brave and fight against all odds, especially all that is evil. Shiva grows up with his grandfather's words as his Bhagavad Gita. However, Shiva's parents Udaya Murthy (Jayaprakash) and Lakshmi (Lakshmi Ramakrishnan) want him to lead a peaceful life. Shiva gets arrested by the police after fighting with a law student named Guna (Chaitanya Krishna), who is in Gowri's (Sentrayan) gang. Enters Priya (Shriya Saran), who is a law student and also the daughter of a police official (Babu Antony). She bails Shiva out and falls for him after seeing him fight for other people's good. Eventually, Shiva too falls for her.

Meanwhile, Guna wants revenge as Shiva had humiliated him in front of everyone. He wants Shiva dead. Things take a turn when Shiva goes to the bus stop with his friend to pick up Ramanujan's (Sathyan) father. There, a couple of rowdies kidnap a young girl. Shiva could not stand this and fights with them. Gowri was one of the rowdies there, and Shiva hits him. Gowri is infuriated and wants Shiva dead at any cost. Shiva's entire family stops talking to him, though he insisted that what he did was for the good. Shiva's sister Kavitha (Monica) eventually marries Ramanujan, and his brother (Srinath) marries his longtime love. These marriages happen without Shiva's knowledge, and he becomes shocked and shattered. He packs up and leaves his house since he realizes that his presence will only make things dangerous for his family. He takes his grandfather's photo along with him. The lawyer Kavitha helps Shiva escape when he is caught by police.

The climax is when Priya's father and Udaya Murthy convince Shiva to force him out of helping others, ruining his life, and concealing it with danger for him and Priya. Priya's father then receives a message that Gowri was arrested; however he escaped and the police shot him down, to that, Priya's father responded that he will come and see him in the hospital. Shiva travels with Priya's father in a car, where Priya's father advises Shiva to control his anger so that he will get Priya married to him, to which Shiva agrees. Suddenly, they hear a girl's voice. Shiva tries to get out of the car to save the girl. However, Priya's father stops him, asking to control his anger. Shiva could not, and he jumps from the car.

The movie first had a climax where the girl in trouble was Priya and she gets killed by a few rowdies. A few days later, the climax was changed whereby the girl who was dead was someone else, which means that Shiva has not changed his character of trying to help others.