The period is 1970-72. The city is in the grip of a leftist militant movement, popularly knows as the "Naxalbari Movement". The "Naxabari Movement" began in the Naxablbari region to get minimum wages for the agricultural labor and soon spread to other rural and urban areas including Calcutta. It attracted wide participation from the leftish intelligentsia and student groups. Sujata Chatterji is a middle aged, traditional, submissive, unprotesting, upper middle class lady, employed in a commercial bank in Calcutta. She awakens one morning to the shattering news that her youngest and favorite son, Brati,is lying dead in the police morgue, reduced to a mere numerical: Corpse No.1084. This awakening propels her on a jouney of discovery, in the course of whish, struggling to understand her naxalite(militant leftish) sons revolutionary commitment, she begins to recognise her own alienation as a woman and wife from the complacent, hypocritical bourgeoise society her son had rebelled against.