Maayi

Maayi is a South Indian Tamil film released in 2000 which stars Sarath Kumar and Meena in lead roles wherein Vadivelu's comedy performance was critically acclaimed. The film was a super hit at box office.

This film later remade into Telugu as Simharasi with Rajasekhar and Sakshi Sivanand in the year 2001 and in Kannada as Narasimha with Ravichandran in 2012.

Maayi (Sarathkumar) is a well-respected, do-gooder in a village. He considers women in the village as his sisters and even helps financially to conduct their weddings. He is a man who is ready to kill his father Irulandi (Vijayakumar) when he learns that he had a second wife. But the father opts to kill himself rather than face his son and so, Maayi brings his stepsister Lakshmi (Suvalakshmi) to live with him. A local MLA (Rajan. P. Dev) comes to Maayi to get his support during the upcoming election, but he refuses and the MLA loses the election. But his son (Anand), who admires Maayi, marries Lakshmi.

Meanwhile, Bhuvaneswari (Meena), Maayi's distant relative's daughter comes to the village from Bangalore and she initially misunderstands Maayi by seeing his looks but later realizes her mistake after knowing about Maayi's hard work and his help towards improving the village. Maayi has built free hospital, day care center, college etc. to help the villagers. Bhuvaneshwari is attracted towards Maayi and proposes him but Maayi does not accept her love. But Bhuvana remains confident about marrying Maayi following which he tells his flashback. Maayi was born into a very poor family where his mother (Sabitha Anand) was infected by leprosy even before Maayi's birth. Due to poor financial condition, his mother could not be treated in hospital and instead was kept alone in a room. She was not allowed to touch her son Maayi fearing chances of the disease being spread. Maayi has never seen his mother right from his childhood as she always stays in a closed room. When Maayi was 8 years old, his mother gets frustrated more as her disease prevents her to show her affection towards Maayi and she commits suicide by drowning in a river. This shocks Maayi and he decides not to marry any woman as he does not want any girl to touch his body which was even untouched by his beloved mother.