Calcutta, the capital city of West Bengal, the eastern state of India. The period is 1970-72. The city is in the grip of a leftist militant movement, popularly known as the "Naxalbari Movement". The "Naxalbari Movement" began in the Naxalbari region to get minimum wages for the agricultural labour, and soon spread to other rural and urban areas of West Bengal including Calcutta. It attracted widespread participation from the leftist intelligentsia and student groups. Sujata Chatterji is a middle aged, traditional, submissive, unprotesting, upper middle class woman, employed in a commercial bank in Calcutta.

She awakens one early morning to the shattering news of her youngest and favourite son, Brati, lying dead in the police morgue, reduced to a mere numerical Corpse no. 1084. The awakening propels her on a journey of discovery, in the course of which, whilst struggling to understand her naxalite (militant leftist) son's revolutionary commitment, she begins to recognize her own alienation as a woman and a wife from the complacent, hypocritical bourgeoisie society her son had rebelled against.