Maro Charitra

The movie is about the love between a Tamil man, Balu (Kamal Haasan), and a Telugu woman, Swapna (Saritha), who are neighbors in Visakhapatnam. They come from totally different backgrounds and can hardly speak the other's language. When Balu and Swapna admit their love, there is chaos in their homes as they face an unexpected test of their love.

The movie begins with an old, ruined building near the beautiful beach of Vizag. The dilapidated walls of the building are covered with many names, but two names stand apart from the rest---Balu and Swapna.

Balu is a happy, carefree young man who belongs to a Tamil family. He resigns his job after his boss scolds him and he returns to his home in Vizag. His orthodox Tamilian father is always at loggerheads with the Telugu-speaking neighbour family. The family has a beautiful daughter named Swapna, a college student.

While being followed on her way home by a creepy bookstore clerk (who'd earlier shown her a book of nude photos), Swapna sees Balu jogging and starts a one-way conversation with him. Seeing this, the bookstore clerk retreats. Swapna thanks Balu for pretending to be her friend, but he reveals that he doesn't understand Telugu. Balu wants to make friends with her. He tries to meet her later pretending his motorcycle has broken down but he crashes and ends up in the hospital. Impressed, Swapna sends him a gift: a ceremonial mask with her name on it and asking his name.

Despite the nasty conflicts between their families, Balu and Swapna fall deeply in love with each other. They get to know each other, experiencing the joy and innocence of first love. One day, however, Swapna fairly misunderstands Balu when he forcefully kisses her and is offended and breaks up with him. Despite Balu's efforts to make her understand his love, Swapna ignores him and remains angry. A week later, Swapna finds Balu awake all night looking at her window hoping that she would forgive him. Heartbroken at seeing him like that, Swapna forgives him and signals him by turning her room light off and on repeatedly.

They meet the next day and Swapna expresses her love for Balu by kissing his hand. The lovers unite and visit the beaches, forts, waterfalls and scenic places of Goa. While returning home late at night, Balu's motorcycle runs out of petrol. They pose as a newly married couple and ask for a lift in a car. To their shock, Swapna's father is in the car and he takes her home immediately. Balu and Swapna keep meeting each other and fall in love even more.

One day when Swapna returns from college after meeting Balu, she finds the lewd bookstore clerk at her home. The man has secretly clicked pictures of her and Balu together and shown them to her parents. Burning with rage, Swapna's mother forbids her from seeing Balu and accompanies her everywhere. Heartbroken, Balu makes a plan and stealthily meets Swapna during her college lunch break. They go to a hotel for lunch and Balu pauses the elevator halfway to spend some time with Swapna. He sings a love song for her using his broken Telugu. This leads to an amused crowd at the hotel lift listening in. They are reprimanded by the guard as they exit.

Balu and Swapna's families find out. In anger, they lock up Swapna at home and Balu's father scolds him. Despite the opposition, Balu boldly goes and meets Swapna in her home in the presence of her parents and expresses his love for her. Swapna's mother screams and claims that Balu is ruining their family honor.

Finally, both the families meet and Balu and Swapna affirm their love for each other. Their families agree to allow them to marry on one condition – that they separate from each other for one year without any contact or communication. Afterwards, if they still want to be together, they can get married. Balu and Swapna reluctantly agree to the contract.

Balu goes to Hyderabad for a job, while Swapna stays behind in Vizag. During their year of separation, Balu writes a letter every day to Swapna, in which he expresses his pain and love, but doesn't send it to her because of the contract. He learns to speak Telugu fluently from a young widow named Sandhya. To drown his pain of separation, he also learns classical dance from Sandhya.

On the other hand, Swapna visits all the places where she and Balu used to go which brings back old memories. She also visits a rocky hill by the beach, where their names 'Balu' and 'Swapna' are painted on the highest rock. In order to make Swapna forget Balu, her mother destroys the cassette tape that he had given her. The mother also burns her only photo of Balu which Swapna crumbles into her tea and drinks in defiance. In response, Swapna writes Balu's name on every inch of her bedroom wall, making her family even more angry.

Swapna goes on a college trip to Mangalore, where her mother sends her cousin Chakram to spy on her. Chakram wants to marry Swapna, but she doesn't like him. Coincidentally, Balu also comes to Mangalore due to a job assignment. He spots Swapna and follows her to her hotel room, but bumps into Chakram, who lies that he and Swapna are married. A shocked Balu meets Swapna's college friends and asks about her, but they mistakenly say Chakram and Swapna are soon to be married.

Balu is heartbroken and proposes to Sandhya, thinking that Swapna was unfaithful to him. Sandhya is surprised but accepts and fixes their wedding date. Later she finds in his room all the letters he wrote to Swapna, and discovers the truth. Sandhya goes to Vizag and meets Swapna and learns that she is not married and is still waiting for Balu. Seeing their true love, Sandhya sacrifices her love and decides to unite Balu and Swapna.

She tells the truth to Balu and cancels their wedding, urging him to go to his beloved Swapna as their one-year contract was completed. Sandhya's older brother hears that the wedding is cancelled and thinks that Balu abandoned his sister. In a drunken, angry state, he phones his criminal friend in Vizag and asks him to 'completely get rid' of Balu.

When Balu arrives back in Vizag, and is about to meet Swapna in their favorite beach spot, Sandhya's older brother's criminal friend and a gang brutally beat up Balu. Meanwhile, Swapna is heading to the beach to meet Balu. The lascivious bookstore clerk tries to attack her, Swapna tries to escape him and falls from the second floor. The bookstore clerk, seeing her almost dead from the fall, rapes her despite her protests. Swapna and Balu meet after the clerk and the goons flee. However, Balu is badly injured. Distraught, feeling they can't live without each other, they join hands and leap off the cliff together, a symbol of doomed love.

• Kamal Haasan as Balu[1]
• Saritha as Swapna[1]
• Madhavi as Sandhya
• J. V. Ramana Murthi
• Kakinada Syamala
• P. L. Narayana as K. Venkateswara Rao
• Jaya Vijaya as Kanakam
• S. K. Misro as Pattabhi

Maro Charitra
Soundtrack album by M. S. Viswanathan
Released	1978
Genre	Feature film soundtrack
Language	Telugu
Label	EMI
Producer	M. S. Viswanathan
External audio Audio Jukebox on YouTube

The music and background score was composed by M. S. Viswanathan and lyrics were penned by Aatreya.[10] Randor Guy wrote the English portions of a duet picturised on Kamal and Saritha.[11] The 2015 film Bhale Bhale Magadivoy was named after the song from Maro Charitra.[12]

The film was released on 19 May 1978.[13]

Balachander considered remaking Maro Charitra in Tamil, but Kamal felt it was pointless to do so since the film already had many Tamil dialogues and was so successful in Madras.[22] The film was remade into Hindi as Ek Duuje Ke Liye by Balachander himself in 1981.[23] The film like its original became a box-office success and attained cult status. It also marked the Bollywood debut of many South Indian artists including Kamal Haasan, Madhavi and playback singer S. P. Balasubrahmanyam. In the 1981 film, Balachander chose Rati Agnihotri over Saritha as he conceived that a Punjabi girl would be more suitable to the Hindi audience. In 2005, the film was remade in Kannada as Love Story (dubbed in Tamil as Uyirullavarai), with a Hindi man and a Kannada woman as the romantic leads.[24] Despite being labelled as a "frame-to-frame remake" of the original, the film was described as "no match to the original film in any aspect of its making" by K. N. Venkatasubba Rao of The Hindu.[24] Five years later, Ravi Yadav remade the story with the same name in Telugu with Varun Sandesh, Anita Galler and Shraddha Das.[25] Unlike the original, the film was a failure and received negative reviews.[26] A review from Rediff.com noted, "the new-age Maro Charitra is no patch on the original".[27]

Maro Charitra became a landmark in Telugu cinema, and a breakthrough for Saritha and Haasan (in Telugu cinema).[29] In 2017, Kamal Haasan included the film in his list of 70 favourite movies, stating "This was the original for Ek Duje Ke Liye (1981), which was also directed by K Balachander. The Telugu film ran in Chennai for two years. Here the boy was Tamil, the girl Telugu. It was in black and white and I preferred it. The Hindi version was a little flashier when it came to the clothes and so on, it had a Punjabi girl and a Tamil boy. The Maro Charitra heroine (Saritha) was simple-looking but a fantastic performer. I liked the music. It challenged us to have good songs in the Hindi remake too."[30]

• Maro Charitra at IMDb