Modern Love Chennai explores love and relationships through six different love stories set in the city of Chennai. The series is now streaming on Prime Video.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Lalagunda Bommaigal (Episode 1):
In the first episode, a woman, Vaiju, helps a girl, Shoba, get an abortion in the hospital. Vaiju curses the man Shoba loved, as he left her after getting her pregnant. Shoba stays heartbroken for a while.
To help Shoba, Vaiju takes her to a godman, who predicts that Shoba will fall in love with a man who will come from the north and marry her. This man will be a fraud, but he will help her heal. The prediction makes Shoba angry, and she storms out, claiming that she will show everyone that she can survive with respect.
Shoba and Vaiju work at Shoba’s father’s biscuit factory, where a boy named Nathuram buys biscuits. Nathuram is from North India and has a snack stall nearby. He keeps flirting with Shoba and treating her like she is special.
While Shoba is initially not interested after being jilted once, she eventually comes around when Vaiju tells her that Nathuram is a good person and that he helped pay for her hospital bill. Shoba falls in love with him, despite the panchayat’s opposition to their relationship.
Shoba’s ex-lover and his friends keep stirring up trouble for them, and when the panchayat comes to warn Shoba’s father, Shoba goes to look for Nathuram, but he is nowhere to be found.
It turns out that another girl who had come from Nathuram’s hometown and was being helped by him, as she did not know the local language, was in a relationship with him. Nathuram got her pregnant and left her. It is Vaiju who now helps her get an abortion.
Shoba then decides to get married to a man chosen by her father because she still wants to show everyone that she can live with respect. On her wedding night, Shoba’s husband tells her that he is none other than the godman she visited with Vaiju.
He tries to calm down an angry Shoba and apologizes to her for not telling her the truth sooner. He claims that he is a changed man now and that he wants to lead an honest life. Shoba eventually forgives him and starts a new life with him.
As a couple, the two of them live a happy life. When Shoba goes out for snacks with her husband, she ends up running into Nathuram, who is now married. However, she forgets all about him when her husband makes her smile.
Shoba’s husband is, in fact, from North Arcot and is settled in North Madras. He also used to be a fraud once. The couple discusses how the prediction he made about Shoba actually came true.
Imaigal (Episode 2):
A man named Nithiya confesses his feelings to a girl named Devi. Sometime later, Devi tells him that she is suffering from retinal degenerative disease, which is incurable. Due to that, in some years, she will lose her vision completely.
She admits that she should have told him about it sooner and asks him to think about their relationship. In response, the next day, Nithiya comes to college and shows Devi that he has got her name tattooed on his chest, and the two of them continue dating.
With time, they start working, get married, and live a happy life together. Eventually, Devi gets pregnant and gives birth to their daughter. However, after the birth of their daughter, Devi’s vision worsens.
While Devi does her best to take care of their daughter, the baby ends up swallowing something in her presence and has to be taken to the hospital. Her own helplessness upsets Devi, but Nithiya comforts her.
Five years later, Devi’s vision has gotten worse, and she has a hard time raising her daughter. Although Devi’s mother lives with them to help them out, Devi often feels like Nithiya is not doing his best to help her look after their daughter.
When they go to attend a wedding together, Nithiya tells Devi that he wants to have another child, which upsets her, as she is already struggling to raise one child. When their argument escalates, Nithiya leaves Devi in the middle of the road.
Moments later, he comes back to get her and apologizes to her. They resolve their differences, but Nithiya does not forget the fact that Devi feels like she is losing her whole life with her vision.
While Nithiya gets to go out, work, and have a life, she is stuck at home with her worsening vision that does not allow her to do anything that she likes. On top of that, she has to somehow raise their daughter.
Years ago, Devi had told him about her childhood wish of learning to play veena, which she never got to do. Now, Nithiya insists that she learn to play the veena because he thinks that this might make her happy.
Two years later, Devi’s vision is almost gone, but she has learned to play the veena. She plays the instrument expertly as Nithiya and their daughter watch her.
Kaadhal Enbadhu Kannula Heart Irukkura Emoji (Episode 3):
The third episode follows Mallika, a girl who loves romantic films and believes in finding the kind of love that is portrayed in the films. In school, she has a crush on a boy named John, but to her disappointment, John moves to Delhi.
In college, she starts dating a boy named KK but breaks up with him when she catches him cheating on her. To deal with her breakup, she watches all the romantic films in her collection and keeps eating. Once that is done, she comes out of her room, loses weight, and moves on.
When she gets a job, she falls in love with a colleague, Anbu. She likes him enough to take their relationship to the next level, but she leaves him when he turns out to be a casteist.
She then tries dating apps to find the one for her and goes on several disastrous dates until she finds her perfect match. However, her perfect match turns out to be her relative, who is like a brother to her.
Unable to find her one true love, she questions a filmmaker about it. He gives her a reality check and tells her that cinema does not depict the truth. He asks Mallika to think about it, which makes her angry.
Eventually, Mallika agrees to let her parents find someone for her and ends up marrying the man they choose. On their wedding night, when it starts raining, Mallika asks him about dancing in the rain, which is one of her romantic fantasies.
To her surprise, her husband actually starts dancing in the rain and makes Mallika join him. Like her, her husband is also a hopeless romantic, who always wished to find someone romantic like himself. After ending up together, the two of them live happily ever after.
Margazhi (Episode 4):
The fourth episode revolves around a young girl named Jazmine, whose parents’ divorce affects her negatively. After the divorce, Jazmine stays with her father, as her mother does not want Jazmine to live with her.
Jazmine does not seem to be happy, and she does not even speak to her father properly, so her father decides to make her join the church’s catechism classes and choir during her holidays.
There, she meets Milton, a boy who has come from Delhi to stay with his grandmother for a while. Jazmine starts liking Milton and yearns to have a romantic relationship like other people around her.
Jazmine keeps dreaming of Milton and starts dressing up more before going to church. Eventually, she starts spending time with the other people her age who come to the church, which gives her an opportunity to get to know Milton.
Finally, Milton asks her out. When it starts raining on their first date, Milton takes her to his grandmother’s house. He tells her about his own parents’ separation, and the two of them play the piano. After that, they start spending more and more time together.
One day, Milton tells her that he loves her but that he is going back to Delhi soon. His grandmother will be leaving with him, and he does not know when he will get to see Jazmine again.
When Jazmine questions him about his reasons for liking her, he points out all the things he likes about her, and the two of them kiss. Although Jazmine’s parents’ divorce is finalized, Jazmine has started smiling again.
Paravai Kootil Vaazhum Maangal (Episode 5):
Rohini meets Ravi on a metro. Since they have the same phone and the same ringtone, he accidentally answers her phone and apologizes for it when he realizes what he has done.
The two of them continue meeting on the metro every day and start talking. With time, they grow close and fall in love. Ravi is already married and has two children. He then finally decides to tell his wife about Rohini, as he plans to marry her.
Ravi’s wife, Revathi, accepts his and Rohini’s relationship. She wishes to meet Rohini and invites her to their home because she wants to discuss with both of them how they will be telling the children about the changes in the family.
Ravi’s father does not approve of his relationship with Rohini and tries to convince Ravi to change his mind, but he does not listen. Rohini ends up spending the night at their house, and Revathi treats Rohini like a friend, even though she is also hurt.
Revathi believes that it will be best for her to leave the children with Ravi and Rohini. She wants the two of them to build a new life of their own with the children. Meanwhile, Rohini sees Ravi’s other world, which includes his children and Revathi, for the first time and wants to be a part of it.
While Revathi gives Rohini her family, she takes the emptiness inside Rohini, hoping that it will help her find clarity in life. Sometime later, Ravi and Revathi move out of the house where they lived as a family.
Ravi and Rohini live with the children, while Revathi, who now has a job, visits them once every two weeks. Revathi makes the children accept Rohini by making up a story. The two women still get along.
When Revathi is returning to her house alone after meeting her children, Ravi, and Rohini, she thinks about the time she met Ravi for the first time and smiles fondly.
Ninaivo Oru Paravai (Episode 6):
The last episode follows Sam and K’s story. They sleep together for the last time and part ways, but Sam tells him that she has kept something that belongs to him. Then, Sam is seen with her psychiatrist, as she has recently experienced emotional trauma.
Sam’s psychiatrist warns her not to skip her medicines because doing that might lead to delusions. She also asks Sam to stay away from anything that reminds her of K, and Sam gets rid of things that make her miss him.
It turns out that K was in an accident. The doctors had to put him in an induced coma for surgery, and he has now lost part of his memories. K’s sister visits Sam and informs her that K remembers their relationship but not the fact that they broke up.
K’s doctor believes that he needs Sam, as he trusts her. If she narrates his memories to him, he will believe whatever she says and will slowly start remembering everything.
Sam agrees to help, and the doctor asks her to narrate to him only the pleasant memories. Sam and K’s breakup was bad. Sam had begged him to stay, but an upset K had told her that he never wanted to see her again before leaving, so Sam does not need to tell him about that.
Sam visits K in the hospital and starts narrating the happy memories they made together. When they were together, a woman had predicted that their relationship will not last. This left an impact on Sam.
As their relationship developed, Sam and K started living together. Sam kept thinking about what could break them up, but even the worst-case scenario that she could think of did not result in their breakup.
In the present, Sam is still heartbroken and has not been taking her medicines. She hugs K while narrating their past memories and then leaves the hospital room crying.
At home, she finds a note left for her by K that tells her that he will always think of her, regardless of their relationship. She also takes out his journal that she had kept with her.
She is taken back to the time they first met. They met on a film set where they were both extras. They then went out for drinks, and K told her that he wants to be a filmmaker. He also told her about the script that he had written.
The story that he told her began the way this episode began, with the two lovers parting ways and the heartbroken girl sitting with her psychiatrist. The story was interrupted, as the two of them ended up sleeping together.
At her house, K continued the story. He told her that after the heroine left the hero’s hospital room crying, the hero and the heroine met at their usual spot. In the present, Sam meets K at the place where they went to have drinks for the first time.
K knows that they broke up and asks her about it, but she refuses to tell him what caused their breakup. K accuses her of manipulating him to get back together with him, but Sam denies being a cheat.
She tells K that she wanted to help him remember their time together because that was the best time of her life, and it still makes her happy. She wanted him to have those memories as well.
She thinks that they should not meet again and says goodbye. Before leaving, she asks him if this is how it ends.
On her way home, she gets a call from her psychiatrist because she missed her appointment. When Sam informs her that she went to meet K, her psychiatrist gets worried and tries to make her understand how serious her condition is, but she does not listen.
When she gets home, K comes to see her and admits that he cannot trust his brain or his memories, but he still likes them and that he wants to be with her. When she asks him why she should be with him, he tells her that even after his life-threatening accident, he remembered her.
Sam and K get back together. They think that this is their happily-ever-after-moment, and once Sam closes the door, the words “a film by K” will appear on the door, which is exactly what happens, leaving it up to the viewers to decide what is real and what is not.
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