Mani Shankar Mukherjee, known in Bengali literature by his pen name Sankar, passed away on Friday at a private hospital in Kolkata.
Born in Howrah in December 7, 1933, Sankar, still in his teens, served as a clerk to the last British barrister Noel Frederick Barwell at the Calcutta High Court.
Jana Aranya -- his novel was made a highly acclaimed movie by Satyajit Ray
The theme of job crisis in West Bengal of 1970s is portrayed very well in both the novel and the film.
Sankar went on to pen many more novels, many of which made it to the silver screen. Two films from Satyajit Ray’s city trilogy – Seemabaddha and Jana Aranya - were based on Sankar’s novels.
The 1968 hit Chowringhee, starring Uttam Kumar and Subhendu Chatterjee in the lead was also based on a novel by Sankar.
He also wrote several books on Ramakrishna Paramhamsa and Swami Vivekananda.
In 2021, he was conferred with a Sahitya Akademi award.
In 1962, Sankar conceived Chowringhee on a rainy day at the waterlogged crossing of Central Avenue and Dalhousie - a busy business district in the heart of Kolkata. The novel, set in the opulent hotel he called Shahjahan, was made into a cult movie in 1968. It is wrongly said that Sankar marketed his literary work to Bengali households with the marketing slogan A bagful of Sankar (Ek Bag Sankar) and collections of his books were sold in blue packets through this marketing effort.
He has been rewarded with Sahitya Akademi Award on 18 March 2021 for his outstanding autobiographical work of Eka Eka Ekashi[7][8] and also received Farha Blue Kazi International award in 2021 for his book Subarno Sujog.
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