The film, based on an acclaimed short story by Akhil Sharma and written by screenwriter Sabrina Dhawan (Monsoon Wedding), is a cross-cultural romance between a confused and lonely middle-aged Indian, who has lived in America for 20 years, and his exasperating, free-spirited blonde neighbour.

In an American suburb in Northern New Jersey, conservative, middle-aged Indian immigrant Gopal, a telephone-company engineer who has taken early retirement, is celebrating Diwali in November with his wife and grown daughter.

As Gopal recovers from this shock and tries to talk her out of it, largely on the grounds that she will be living in sin in his eyes, his wife Madhu announces that she is leaving him as well, and is taking up the spiritual life in an ashram in India.

Confused, mortified, bored, and directionless, newly single Gopal lies to his few Indian-American acquaintances about the situation, and refuses to answer his daughter's phone calls from Mongolia.

He tries to cope with his emptiness by redecorating slightly, searching through the various corners of his small house, reading newspapers, and watching videos of Bollywood romance extravaganza films.

Desperately lonely, he latches upon a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine that had belonged to his daughter, and takes a quiz gauging a man's suitability for a relationship – which reveals that he is a "Ditchable Dude".

In the midst of his distress and his Bollywood fantasies, Gopal's eccentric neighbor, the oddly attractive divorcée Mrs. Shaw – whom he had previously thought of as loose-moralled (because of her one-night stands) and slovenly – appears at his door asking to borrow one of his rakes.

Oscar-nominee Carol Kane, familiar to many as Latka's wife Simka on the sitcom Taxi, and noted also for her roles in Hester Street, Annie Hall, The Princess Bride, and Scrooged, was chosen to play Gopal's unconventional American neighbour, divorcée Mrs. Shaw.

"[1] To round out the major cast, Ganatra chose Merchant-Ivory actress Madhur Jaffrey, who had been in her 1999 film Chutney Popcorn, to play Gopal's disgruntled wife.

"[8] The team used the immigrant-adrift-in-America theme of the story to garner major funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Diversity Initiative,[12] and from the National Asian American Telecommunications Association.

The film's Bollywood street dance number was shot in New York City's Jackson Heights, where colourful Indian-American signage helped make a ready-made outdoor set.

Ganatra observes humorously that the outdoor dance number "kept getting pushed on the schedule because of weather, and we finally did it on the coldest day of the year with the poor actors in saris".

[14][37] The film has received very favorable print reviews, and was variously described as "charming," "wry", "touching", and "hilarious" by Variety, Newsday, Time Out New York, and The Southeast Asian.

[14] New Beats remarked that screenwriter Dhawan and director Ganatra "capture the sense of suburban desolation in Gopal's world and the vivaciousness of Bollywood in the fantasy sequences.

[1] And the Austin Chronicle wrote, "Director Nisha Ganatra has crafted a frothy yet poignant valentine to first-generation immigrants longing for their home country while forging a new life in their adopted one, and a celebration of the romantic lurking within even the most resigned-to-loneliness heart.

"[39] Ronnie Sheib in Variety noted the "friendly cross-cultural fireworks" between Roshan Seth and Carol Kane, and stated that "[c]hemistry between leads spikes in quirky arcs, with fantasy Bollywood musical sequences livening up tender moments."

And director Nisha Ganatra is noted for "ground[ing] Kane's feyness in workaday experience and middle-aged acceptance, making her the perfect vehicle for Seth's long-delayed voyage of self-discovery".