Chiranjeevuli is a man who was a wealthy landowner and farmer, but his better-educated wife Neelima squandered his resources in investment schemes. Reduced to penury, his wife leaves him, and though she wants to take their son Vishwanath and give him a good education, Chiranjeevi (he goes by the shorter name, and his son thinks of him as a hero) takes the boy and struggles to find adequate jobs in Hyderabad to do this himself. He tells the boy that he is working for the CID and that the range of work he is doing, and the places they are forced to live in are part of his undercover mission.