Synopsis
#2:
Title: A Stitch in Time
Idea: Doppelganger
Plot: A wealthy businessman is reported to have committed suicide
due to financial pressures. Is he indeed dead?
Genre:
Drama
Script
Regn No (SWA): 35035
Membership
No: 49484
The Story in 9 Segments
Seg 1
A suave, savoy-suited, lanky man emerges from his Mercedes Benz parked at a short distance from a long bridge over a mighty river in flood with mobile in his hand. He stretches signalling the long ride that he has been on to give us a full view of the protagonist. He gives direction to his driver to stay in the car until he comes back from the walk over the half-mile long bridge. It is the time of day when there is very little traffic on the bridge.
The driver watches his boss’s back striding purposely on to the bridge in animated discussion on the mobile. He does not perceive anything amiss. He mentally times his boss’s return based on ground covered. He decides to take a short break by sliding down on the seat and tipping his driver hat to cover it from the sun and nearly drops off to sleep.
He is awoken by a speeding lorry the gust of breeze buffeting the car. He looks up. He sees the lorry continuing its mad rush on the bridge but sees nothing else. He does not see his boss. He jumps out of his car and races down the mile-long bridge. He looks hither and thither, but there is no sign of the boss. Did he get hit by the lorry and got carried away (in the cattle catcher attached to the front). He calls the boss’s phone. The phone is unreachable. He calls back home to the boss’s family and shares the situation.
Seg 2
We see a lanky man – SG Vishwanath’s Doppelganger. In another environment. He is dressed more casually. He is on the mobile phone. He is highly agitated. He is crossing the road still speaking on the mobile. Bang! He is thrown 7 feet high and lands baam! on the road spread-eagled.
A young flamboyant aristocratic person driving the Audi S5 emerges from the car, surveys the situation and calls the police and ambulance. He takes pictures of the accident spot and the accident victim.
It is evident to all bystanders that the man with the mobile was at fault. The police and ambulance arrive and rush the body to the hospital and record the driver’s statement as they follow the ambulance.
The accident victim is declared dead on arrival. Investigations into the man’s background reveal that he was a bachelor and had no living relative. It is decided to donate the body to the hospital. The police declare the case as an accident. The man driving the Audi he is seen with the hospital superintendent in serious discussion and handing over a suitcase.
Seg 3
Aerial and coastal guard search is initiated down the river for SGV. His body is found. There are major bruises as if fallen on a rock. He is identified by his family as SGV based on birth marks. The case is declared as suicide and the body is handed over to the family for the funeral rites to be conducted.
Seg 4
The son of SGV takes over the business. He displays all the sharpness of the father in negotiations with the creditors and is successful in organizing a moratorium on the payments and negotiating better terms to make it reasonably possible to save the business as well as pay back the loans. He also gets a white knight to invest in the business.
Seg 5
Flashback to SGV with the man who was
in the Audi S5. The man is sharing with SGV of losing Rs 400 crore on an
investment of Rs 7000 crore he made on a project. The PE who invested in the
company wants to take the company away from him. It is the same PE who has
given SGV Rs 1000 crore. SGV provides advice and financial support to the
youngster to buyout the PE share with the money given by the PE to SGV. They
work together and get the company back onto a strong footing. The sheets from
the calendar are ripped off to show the Audi man brimming at his stock market
debut and share price making him a billionaire. The Audi man is the white
knight who invests and extends funds to SGV’s son to delay any immediate
prosecution or seizure of property.
Seg 6
We are at PE firm office. They are reviewing their investments and are coming a cropper one company after another in their portfolio of investments. In each case the reason is the company’s Achilles’ heel. The scenarios that unfold revolve around the following: the competitor in the segment get additional funding; the partners quarrel plummeting the company to ruin; the is a change in the government policy toward the segment; there is crucial customer data leak of a financial firm; fraudulent activities in another – litany of relatable business misfortunes. The PE partners start getting calls from their principal investors to start showing results or to make themselves scarce. The PE firm suffers significant losses and has to shut down. Some have them investigations begun on their conduct.
Seg 7
Flashback to SGV scuba diving in the
Andamans and learning to hold his breathe for a considerable period of time. We
see him examining a submersible sub that can seat one to three people.
Seg 8
Flashback to SGV on the bridge. He is on the phone with two people in the sub. One of them is the Audi man. The other is the SGV doppelganger who accidently got killed in the road accident. SGV jumps off the bridge and is hauled into the sub. At the same time the doppelganger is pushed out of the sub into the river simulating what would have happened to SGV body when leaping into the river at that time with the force of the current. The doppelganger body is marked with visible indelible birth marks on hand and face.
Seg 9
SGV questions Audi man how he came up with this crackpot idea which nearly got him killed.
Audi man shares his deep anxiety for SGV who became a father figure to him after his bailout. He could relate what SGV, an honest-to-goodness man, was going through when he got dragged into a debt-trap with other headwinds. He concluded that there was no way given the size of the debt but disappearing.
In the pretext of taking SGVs mind off his business problem, he got him engaged in scuba diving and achieving nirvana by holding his breathe underwater and exploring corrals underwater with the sub.
Then the Doppelganger accident happened. When Audi man gazed at the spread-eagled body the plan that unfolded came in great detail into his mind.
There was risk but it was a now-or-never situation. He negotiated with the hospital superintendent to give him the body for research that one his firm in genetics was undertaking (on which he nearly lost his shirt).
Before the body could decay the plan had to be put in place. Audi man called SGV when he was driving back from his parents’ house. He geographically mapped and instructed him on the plan. He told him that it is now or never.
The plan will give him a breather to work on a strategy to get back to the perpetrators and rebuild his fortune from a safe house.
It also meant living the rest of his life in anonymity and far from his family until somethings could change even as his family goes through the grief.
Some price needed to be paid for a larger goal.
Curtains
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