Chandan Ray Chowdhury, a high-ranking government officer and a respectable family man is hauled to the police station on the night of thirty-first December, along with prostitutes and ordinary criminals for what appears to be a trivial offence related to wine and women. We find that Chandan is no better than those caught on the wrong side of the law in his greed, prevarications and deceptions. Chandan’s case is but one instance of a larger phenomenon: the crumbling of values among the urban middle class. The urban middle class in Calcutta and elsewhere is caught up in dreams and desires that make nothing impossible to achieve and no principle too high for compromise. These symptoms exist worldwide since we all live in a technologically oriented, multi-nationally moulded global system. It is this that makes Falling Apart not only an incisive critique of the Bengali middle class, but also a compelling picture of our times.
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