The film opens some years ago with Kolkata police inspector Michael at a political rally. It is a large rally, several hundred people packed into a square, the largest protest against the current government, yet it is wholly peaceful. Michael receives a radio order to open fire and disperse the crowd. He protests, it is a peaceful rally, but his supervisor, acting on political pressure from above, repeats the order to fire. Michael fires a single shot that accidentally hits a 12-year-old boy.
Michael is diagnosed with "progressive myopia" and subsequently fired from his position without severance or pension benefits. He begins receiving angry phone calls from the father of the dead boy. The father threatens to kill Michael's 8-year-old son Roy on his 12th birthday.
Several years later, Michael is living in a small apartment with his son. He makes a miserable living as a projectionist in a movie theater and ekes out some additional income pirating movies for a gang of local thugs. Michael is always harangued by his landlord, the drunk and bitter Mr. DCosta, for overdue rent and continues to receive progressively threatening calls from the dead boy's father. His only goal is to get Roy out of the city and into a boarding school, saving money that he moves about his apartment so DCosta cannot find it. Rwitika, Michael's only friend, occasionally looks after Roy and urges him to pick up and move on. Amid this turmoil, he finds a quiet comfort in Mrs DCosta, who generally sympathizes with him and occasionally warns him about her husband.
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