Farhan Qureshi (R. Madhavan), Raju Rastogi (Sharman Joshi), and Rancchoddas "Rancho" Shyamaldas Chanchad (Aamir Khan) are three engineering students who share a room in a hostel at the Imperial College of Engineering, one of the best colleges in India. While Farhan and Raju are average students from modest backgrounds, Rancho is from a rich family. Farhan wants to become a wildlife photographer, but has joined engineering college to fulfil his father's wish. Raju on the other hand wants to uplift his family fortunes. Rancho is a wealthy genius who studies for the sheer joy of it. However, Rancho's passion is for knowledge and taking apart and building machines rather than the conventional obsession of the other students with exam ranks. With his different approach Rancho incurs the wrath of dean of college, Professor Viru Sahastrabudhhe (ViruS) (Boman Irani). Rancho irritates his lecturers by giving creative and unorthodox answers, and confronts ViruS after fellow student Joy Lobo hangs himself in his dormitory room. Joy had requested an extension on his major project on compassionate grounds—his father had suffered a stroke—but ViruS refused, saying that he himself was completely unmoved by his own son's accidental death after being hit by a train. Rancho denounces the rat race, dog-eat-dog, mindless rote learning mentality of the institution, blaming it for Lobo's death.
