Anjali (1990)

Tollywood Picture Spotlite: Anjali (1990).

The movie revolves around a family of four: a young civil engineer Shekar (Raghuvaran), his wife, Chitra (Revathi), and their two young children Arjun (Tarun) and Anu (Shruti).

The movie opens with Chitra giving birth to her third child but unfortunately the girl is still-born. A couple of years later, Shekar and his family move to a new apartment complex. The family seems to have moved on from their grief due to the still-born child incident and live happily. After a few altercations with the kids in the colony, Arjun and Anu are accepted by all the kids as their own. The kids are all for pulling pranks and generally causing a clamor around the apartment colony. One such constant joke they play on a mentally retarded ex-watchman (Janakaraj) of the colony, much to the chagrin of his wife. The only tenant they are afraid of is an ex-convict (Prabhu Ganesan) who lives alone in one of the apartments.

On one particular day, Chitra and the kids decided to surprise Shekar by meeting him at his construction area, unannounced. Nevertheless, on coming to the site, they learned from one of the construction workers that Shekar has left to conduct an emergency matter elsewhere. When Shekar returns home for dinner that night, Chitra casually asks Shekar where he was on that day, to which, Shekar replies that he was at the construction site the whole day. Chitra feels hurt to hear about Shekar lying and leaves the dining hall. Arjun and Anu too sense that their father is lying to them and leave the place. Nevertheless, before leaving the room, Anu blurts out accusations on her father, saying that he's lying about being at the site the whole day. Sekhar apologises to Chitra and consoles her and they both make up.
On New Year's Eve, Arjun slips out late at night with the older children to celebrate while Sekhar is out of town on a business trip...