Kunjunni's parents separate soon after his birth, and he is left to be cared by his mother, lacking paternal care and affection. His mother has the help of his grandmother, an estate manager, and his friend Meenakshi, daughter of a maid servant in Kunjunni's house.
Inspired by his uncle, initially a Gandhian and later a Marxist, Kunjunni is drawn to left-wing ideologies at college, believing that communism is the answer to social hardships and inequalities. Eventually he joins an extremist Marxist group. After an attack on a police station, Kunjunni is arrested and charged, but is later acquitted.
Kunjunni matures with experience, yet feels lonely and disillusioned. He tries to turn his life around; on a quest to find his childhood friend, Meenakshi, he does so and marries her. He sells his properties to a newly wealthy man, whose father was once a servant in Kunjuni's house and moves to an ordinary house, trying to live a normal family life with his wife and son.
One day, a college classmate, a journalist, seeks to interview him, which Kunjunni declines. Later, Kujunni, with the help of his journalist friend, publishes his first story, "Karaksharangal". However, due to its subversive content, the government banned it. When Kunjunni reads this in the newspaper, he began to laugh, with his family, at this corrupt world.