Abhishek Bachchan as Bunty
Fursatganj is a very small town. Too small for big dreams. Especially of the kind Rakesh dreamt.

Rakesh is a misfit in his own hometown. So he finds his spaces where no one can touch him. Rakesh is a man of schemes, ideas and restlessness. His brain, and hence his fingers, are constantly upto something or the other.

He lets parrots free of their cages. And little tea boys free of their insecurities.

He doesn't have the patience to put up with the way the town and its folk function. And for their part, they can't figure why he is the way he is and if he is the way he is then what is it that he's doing here... a solitary nut amongst the bolts!

Rakesh is the fish that swims against the tide with a vengeance.

And "Bunty"... is Rakesh's fantasy starting to unleash.

Rani Mukherjee as Babli
Pankinagar is metaphorically a small black and white town. It's blunt, boring monotones, deadweights tied at the ends of technicolour dreams. The only kind Vimmi has.

She can't quite figure where her duties as a small town, conservative daughter end and where Vimmi, the self proclaimed queen of her little kingdom (and soon to be queen of the whole wide world out there!) begins.

She has no qualms about shaking a vigorous leg with the boys in her papaji's akhaada; about walking up to a complete stranger and asking him to accompany her to the loo on a railway station in the middle of the night; about chiding teaboys who mistake her to be just another girl. Which, quite clearly, she's not.

One day, Vimmi puts out her best foot and starts a journey into a new land and a new life. Quite by accident, she gets rechristened. An unwilling "Babli" at first, she finds her feet over the course of a number of capers, in step with the other half of the duo, "Bunty".

Amitabh Bachchan as Dashrath Singh
Urban hunter. Breaker of norms. And heads.

Can smell a rat in a garbage heap.

(Once he does that, the rat can kiss his ass goodbye!)

Hater of those who mess with the system. Hater of the system.

A walking contradiction. Inspires dread. Awe. And curiosity.

Not necessarily in that order!

Happens to be the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Crime Branch. But it's hard to tell because no one remembers ever seeing him in uniform. Currently has exactly four passions:

Bidis. Channa. Bunty. And Babli.

And that's proving to be the biggest challenge of his thirty-year career.

Storyline
Bunty and Babli are two avid dreamers. Two free souls born into caged small town realities. They grow weary of being two specks on the horizon. They desire the horizon itself.

And so they pack their aspirations in worn out bags, whip a scarf of confidence around their proud necks and set forth. On a journey across the length and breadth of the country, spinning circles around the people they meet.

Bunty wants to be amongst the richest in the world. He wants to be in jacuzzis. He wants to be in limousines. He wants to be a big blip on the radar of history. He wants to be big black typo in newspaper headlines.

In short, he wants out of here.

In a parallel universe, in another slump-backed, crinkle nosed small town called Pankinagar, "Vimmi", our heroine, faces the same dilemma. Does she follow the course every other young marriageable girl does? Or does she carve new fatelines on her soft as butter palms?

In her mind (but in her mind alone!) she's the foxiest thing to ever have hit a ramp. She's the hottie the world can just gape at but never touch. She is Miss India. So she too decides to fly the coop.

Somewhere along their individual journeys, Rakesh and Vimmi meet, flogged by circumstance but unwilling to concede.

In a moment of mistaken truth, "Bunty" and "Babli" are born. And the world gets turned on its head!

We follow the duo through caper after caper, in which they meet rajahs, powerbrokers, shaadi bandwallahs, millionaires, investors, leaders, ministers, banjaras, elephants, explorers, hoteliers, chai boys and one very, very upset policeman!

The world sits up and takes wide eyed notice of this pair.

Bunty is the Rakesh that Rakesh always dreamt of being, with a delicious twist.

Babli is the Vimmi that Vimmi never thought she'd become, with another delicious twist.

Together they are more than the sum of their parts.

Together they are spiritual gurus, bureaucrat and secretary, gangster and moll, business partners, hen pecked husband and pregnant wife, lawyer and sexually harassed client, vagabonds, caught-in-a-downpour lovers and lots, lots more. And they seem to be loving every minute of it.

Their escapades play out against backdrops as varied as the Taj Mahal, the banks of the Ganges, the saffrons of Benaras, the browns of Kanpur and Lucknow, the whites of Mussoorie, the tinkling bells of Rishikesh and Hardwar, the skies of Delhi and all across the vein like network of the Great Indian railways and highways.

Every mundane reality in every dusty corner of India is flushed out of its slumber by a splash of "Bunty aur Babli" excitement in this, the tale of two dreamers that blaze the sky like comets. But do not die. Like all good comets they promise to reappear again. And they do. And how they do all of that is, seriously, the stuff legends are made of.