Three friends have decided to booze on the day of the Indian Independence. But they soon discover that it is a dry day as usual. Our three renegades decide to fetch spirit from the black market as it is quite natural in this part of the world. Calcutta, once a capital of the East India Company from Britain and is preferably coined as the cultural capital of India, has become an urban dilemma in terms of life, sensibility and economy in global terms.
Our three protagonists look for booze especially in a closed down industrial belt where abandoned factories in ruins give the names to the local bus stops. They visit two factories in search of black market liquor, but they do not succeed. In turn, they come across two broken existences who had their lives connected to the locked out factories. These workers are alienated, do not speak in a dictum that the settled middle class renders its expression and thoughts.
They visit a surreal factory full of glasses. They becomes speechless, and this factory is not a set, but a real fact in the southern part of the city. Ironically, the film does not ponder on the externalized gaze of the first world upon the third world, neither the camera throws an oriental sympathy on these conditions. For these three renegades, and like all the Bengalis and Indians, the sight of closed down factories and deplorable social conditions are taken for granted as a part of the third world existence. They browse through the city and at last fall back on two very important states of life - love and affection on one hand, and intellect on the other - an emblematic existence for the sensible middle class.
But soon they realize that their search for liquor transforms into a comedy of disappointments - love is lost in the process, and the professor as the last resort for liberal camaraderie is tested for the purpose. The whole process teaches them in the most subtlest of ways, through the streets, lost loves, lost people and lost economy the essence of an existence which we hardly pay heed to. It is almost a story of Sisyphus, where common people as Sisyphus is not defeated as the Greek myth, rather is victorious and triumphant for his struggle to overcome his load