Kharij on AllMovie

In this 1983 Cannes entry, director Mrinal Sen has used a similar setting and theme as in his earlier Ekdin Pratidin. A lower middle-class couple with one child discovers that the house boy they hired from a peasant family left his damp sleeping place under the stairs one night to warm up in the lingering heat of the coal-fired oven in the kitchen and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The couple panic as the police start investigating the death, for the husband and wife know that the boy was not treated the same as their own child and are frightened lest the police bring charges against them or the peasant parents of the boy bring them to court for negligence. Their fears increase after the family comes for the body -- but the peasants are far from litigious or vindictive, and the husband and wife are left with their own thoughts as the family returns to their village in grief.