During the era of British India, lives a happy go lucky, school drop-out Shivkar Bapuji Talpade aka Shivi (Ayushmann Khurrana), who falls in love with a local stage dancer Sitara (Pallavi Sharda). This makes Shivi''s father throw him out of the house and he bumps into a crazy scientist Pandit Subbaraya Shastri (Mithun Chakraborty). Shastri is constantly been chased by British soldiers for his weird experiments but lesser they know that Shastri is secretly building a flying machine. Seeing Shivi''s great knowledge of Vedas, Shastri shares his secret book based on ancient Indian aeronautics, which he was using to build an air-plane. Shastri offers Shivi to be his assistant but Shivi refuses. Shivi later proposes to Sitara to marry her, but Sitara resists on the grounds that society will not accept their marriage and goes away to Hyderabad.
Heartbroken, Shivi goes back to Shastri and accepts his offer to assist him. Together they work for several months to design a perfect machine which can fly but kept failing. On running out of funds they request a local king to sponsor their experiments. Finally, they manage to build a small air-plane and had a successful unmanned test flight in presence of many eye witnesses, but the air-craft crashes within few seconds. Shivi later learned that Sitara is back in Bombay and now lives in a poor condition under heavy debts. Shivi and Sitara reunite, but in order to get her out of debt, Shivi sells Shastri''s secret book to a British officer. Feeling betrayed, Shastri could not survive this trauma and dies. Shastri''s death makes Shivi feel so guilty, that he decides to fulfil Shastri''s incomplete dream along with Sitara and his nephew Narayan.
In his quest to build a perfect flying machine, Shivi goes to Banaras to meet a guru, to whom Shastri used to refer. The guru gave Shivi a code "4121", which later helped Shivi to figure out that mercury will be the best fuel for engine. Before Shivi could complete his machine, British officers arrest him on his brother''s complaint. After been rescued by a freedom fighter, Shivi finally takes the air-craft to sea beach. In the end, before soldiers could arrest him again, Shivi flies away along Sitara and becomes worlds'' first humans to ride in a flying machine.
In his quest to build a perfect flying machine, Shivi goes to Banaras to meet a guru, to whom Shastri used to refer. The guru gave Shivi a code "4121", which later helped Shivi to figure out that mercury will be the best fuel for engine. Before Shivi could complete his machine, British officers arrest him on his brother''s complaint. After been rescued by a freedom fighter, Shivi finally takes the air-craft to sea beach. In the end, before soldiers could arrest him again, Shivi flies away along Sitara and becomes worlds'' first humans to ride in a flying machine.