Delhi in a Day is a film which supposedly portrays an authentic aspect of Indian culture. The film begins and revolves around a wealthy Indian family who lives in a large house and has a number of servants who are treated like, well, like servants. They prepare for the visit of a friend’s son who plans to travel India, Jasper (Lee Williams). He idealises India, seeking the country for its infamous spirituality and to discover something about himself in some way. He draws what he sees, daydreams, and a young maid, Rohini (Anjali Patil), catches his eye. Everything goes well until his money disappears. The money being a particularly large sum, he consults the wife (Lilete Dubey), and the blame is all shifted to the servants at once and they are given a time limit to return the money. Here, the class division is clear, but the film does not make any commentary on this. Instead, it shows the livelihood in the household with the rich family in luxury alongside poverty-stricken servants being treated badly as the norm.
Having won a number of awards since its original release, director Prashant Nair successfully tells this unfulfilling story of idealism and reality. If you have the time to watch this film, then great, but there isn’t really much beyond this general indie Hindi drama when it tries to comment on its own society. Perhaps what is best of this film is the scenery of Delhi, the fact that it is filmed on location and highlights an increasingly modernised city with such a drastic class divide of its people.
I call this film unfulfilling because it doesn’t seem to accomplish much. Everything, in the end, is sort of okay, and the wrongdoings are never put right. Perhaps this is the film’s intention. Delhi in a Day certainly does succeed as a drama, and in some ways, a comedy too. All in all, for a film made in 2011, it succeeds in telling a story, but its opportunity of being more socio-economically conscious escapes the viewer.
Nadia Cheung 