Falling Apart

On the night of thirty-first December, Chandan Ray Chowdhury, a senior government officer and respected family man, is dragged into a police station along with prostitutes and petty criminals. The charge looks trivial, something to do with drink and women. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Chandan is no better than the people he has been lined up with. He is greedy, evasive and deceitful. His case is just one example of something larger, the erosion of values among the urban middle class. In Calcutta and elsewhere, that class is caught up in dreams and desires that make nothing seem out of reach and no principle too high to give up. The same symptoms can be seen around the world in a global system shaped by technology and multinational interests. Falling Apart is a sharp portrait of the Bengali middle class and a picture of the times we live in.