Two years after completing Days and Nights in the Forest, Satyajit Ray switched his stage from a sunlit forest to urban Calcutta. However, his subject – the stresses and delusions of middle class life – remained the same. At the film's centre, business executive Shyamalendu (Barun Chanda), the kind of character played by Jack Lemmon played in American cinema, is climbing the career ladder. His sister-in-law Tutul (Sharmila Tagore) visits him at a time of worker unrest, which Shyamalendu deals with in an unedifying manner. The film reflects elements of suspicion that surrounded the commercial sector at the time: the country had just been through an economic crisis, Naxalite communist clashes had taken place, and the Congress Party had lost power in Bengal for the first time since Independence. It’s a sign of Ray’s humanism that, despite his own sympathies for the communists and the left-leaning political temperament of that time, Shyamalendu is treated fairly in a movie that remains as pointed and relevant now as it was upon first release.