It's the 1990s, in a sleepy hillside town in Southern India there is a cavernous mansion surrounded by plantations, inside three preadolescent brothers live with their German shepherd. They buy the groceries, lug water up the slopes in plastic cans, get each other ready for school and lend a hand to workers on the estate. The boys may practically run the house, but the lord of this forsaken domain is their father, a ruthless martinet whose mere sight frightens them to the core.