The debut film of the director that won the National Award for depicting with realistic vigour the exploitation perpetrated on the tribal and the landless, for portraying the spirited fight of the downtrodden and for showing great maturity in the conception and presentation of the theme in this maiden venture.

A young, idealistic director arrives in a village to make a picture set during the Great Bengal Famine. It’s a film that he hopes will reveal the problems and privations still current in rural India.

After being accused wrongly of theft, a slightly addled servant runs away to the city, carrying as his only real possession an axe, which he claims to have killed a tiger with. He takes up life among India's throngs of city-dwelling homeless, and for a little while almost has a decent time of it. He has a girlfriend, and one good friend, and gets by through begging and doing odd jobs.

Set in 1920's during the British Raj, the film is about the breakdown of socio-economic structures, impact of industrialization and non-cooperation movement in rural Bengal.