The beginning of the film is set in 1951 in a small village of Idar in Sabarkantha district, northern Gujarat, where a young man named Gurukant “Guru” Desai (Abhishek Bachchan) dreams of making it big someday. His father (Rajendra Gupta), the headmaster of the village school, tells him not to dream and that dreams never come true. Gurukant decides to go to Turkey and enter the spice trade; later, he is promoted but refuses the job, as he wants to work for himself. Back in his village, he marries Sujata (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), mainly because of the dowry she brings him. Along with Sujata and her brother Jignesh (Arya Babbar), Guru migrates to Bombay and starts trading in cloth. Gradually, he expands his business and sets up manufacturing units of his own, under the name “Shakti Corporation”.

Saga from a middle class family has three close friends at college, each of them having an affluent background. They decide to prolong their student life by skipping their exams – an act that proves how much they value their friendship despite Saga being under pressure to get a job and be less of a burden on his family. Saga finds his love too, but the happiness is short lived as all his comes crashing down at the dawn of a new year, some loose words in the heat of the moment being the reason. His survival and his friendship are on the line as he races against time to wriggle out of this predicament.