A still from the movie. A still from the film showing an upset maid. 

ONCE in a while, the Indian media carry stories of rich Indians abusing domestic servants.

A teenage girl bludgeoned to death for trying on her employer's lipstick; a maid left for a week with no food and locked in the flat by a doctor couple who have gone to Bangkok; a boy punished for over-salting his employer's food by having a hot spatula pressed against his face.

But the daily indignities of staff are known only to the victims, and it is these experiences that film director Prashant Nair portrays in his film Delhi in a Day. A satire on Delhi's nouveaux riches, the film lampoons their conspicuous consumption, endless socialising, narcissism, social one-upmanship - and mistreatment of staff.

Prashant Nair. Director Prashant Nair. 

''My characters do charity work and engage in philanthropic activities but the moment they get home, they can't treat the staff with civility or dignity,'' said Nair, 35, an engineering graduate who turned to making films a few years ago.
In his first feature film, Nair has chosen not to portray the worst crimes committed against domestic help. Depicting brutality would have worked against his intention to use humour and to generate debate among Indians about mistreatment of servants. Also, too dark a film might have run the risk of being rejected outright by Indians.

Delhi in a Day shows a rich, loudmouth socialite who leads a frou-frou lifestyle with her wealthy businessman husband in a mansion in south Delhi. A semi-alcoholic cook, butler, two drivers, and a maid minister to their needs. The socialite routinely calls them ''idiots'' or waves them away in front of guests.

The event that serves as a catalyst to expose how the rich view servants is the visit by a British friend who comes to India seeking spiritual inspiration and finds only the family's rank materialism. His money is stolen. The family assumes automatically that one of the servants is the thief. They are given 24 hours to replace it - or else.

While choosing a location, Nair looked at about 40 sprawling farmhouses in south Delhi. ''In every one, the servants' quarters were pathetic,'' he said. As a French-Indian director, Nair brings a dual perspective: he is an outsider who has lived all over the world with his diplomat parents before settling in Paris but is also an insider who was born in India and used to spend childhood summers in Delhi.

In these holidays, Nair saw a far greater contempt for poor Indians than any shown by the white Mississippi women towards their black maids in the film The Help, with which his film has been compared.

''I used to see children kicking elderly staff. Once I saw a servant being slapped in front of 80 to 90 people for forgetting something. My aim is to get people to … realise that such behaviour needs to change,'' he said.

The film is not the first to portray this lack of humanity. In 2008, Mumbai director Raja Menon, in his film Shortchanged, showed how when a driver tries to borrow money - the equivalent of what a family would spend on a pizza - from the tenants in the building where he works, they brush him off without a thought that he needs it for his son's medical treatment.

But Delhi in a Day focuses on the routine and casual cruelties meted out to servants every day. ''I don't see things getting better. If anything, the younger generation are even more selfish and materialistic,'' Nair said.