According To Plan A

Set in Silicon Valley, the film tells the story of Abhi, a young immigrant techie who hopes to get from nobody to somebody, the old fashioned way - hard work, late nights, regular promotions and eventually, fame and recognition for his talents. As he toils through the daily grind, with his eye on the prize, life decides to have a little fun... And when life smacks you in the head with a lemon, that lemonade can have quite a kick!

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Director's statement:

One of the dilemmas of having lived in a country for few years but having grown up in another is to constantly debate which story to tell. To tell a story set in your homeland, steeped in nostalgia or to tell a story of your current home, and of your new surroundings.

So, in my case, the homeland won and I wrote and planned a couple of films to be set in India. When they did not pan out for various reasons, I was in a limbo.. not sure what to do next. Until I, along with our team, got laid off from my day job at a top Internet company. And the thing about tragedy is, that it becomes hilarious when it happens to a lot of people. And that was the genesis of this film.

I also deliberately set the story in Silicon Valley and made it about a promising but normal young Indian immigrant engineer. In my experience, all of these italicized terms have either been underrepresented or represented in cliches. Most stories about immigrant Indians in US, like me, are limited to illegal immigration, cross-cultural romances, arranged marriages and smelly cooking. It finally gave me a chance to make an authentic film about bi-lingual folks like me, a normal yet non-descript engineer, and about issues which bother us, like quitting a job.