Annapurna is the legendary goddess who served the multitudes from a single grain of rice; Dasgupta's bitterly ironic interpretation (neem meaning "bitter") is an anti-fable for the wretched and the soon-to-be-wretched of the earth. The film describes in haunting, stark imagery the progress of a family from working-class poverty to near starvation. When Brojo loses his job in a small town in the industrial hinterland of Calcutta, he moves with his family to the city, lured by the promise of urban prosperity. After two years, the family barely survives by selling paper bags, eating birdseed, and renting a room to an old beggar. The old man, clinging to a vestige of middle-class respectability, is a living portrait of the future that awaits Brojo and his wife Pritilata. In his room is a bag which Pritilata suspects contains rice; its presence is a magnet for the would-be Annapurna, with tragic consequences. Bitter Morsel has been universally acclaimed by critics in India and elsewhere. The estimable Japanese critic Tadao Sato has called it "a masterpiece, a milestone in Indian cinema," and New Dehli's Contour notes, "Tracing the gradual extinction of the lower-middle-class, Neem Annapurna is a disturbing document...Never before in an Indian film has the architectural reality of a slum come out so powerfully."