Listen to this article:

If not the greatest recorder of Kolkata’s streets, its food and its soul, Manisankar Mukherjee, better known as Sankar, was certainly among them, with his slew of books, starting with his first Koto Ajanare (The Great Unknown), to the fascinating Chowinghee, to Jana Aranya, which underwent a transformation when it was titled The Middleman by the Colossus of Indian cinema, Satyajit Ray, to Seemabaddha (Company Limited), also made into a film by Ray, to his last book, an autobiography, Eka, Eka, Ekashi (Dear Reader: A Writer’s Memoir), all of which were about the people who lived and worked in the city. 

His focus was on the dilemma of how people interrogated the circumstances and events of their lives, like unemployment, corporate culture and the moral conflict of deciding to be or not be a box wallah.

Sankar may have breathed his last on February 20, 2026, but the grief and the mourning and the celebration of his voluminous body of work spills into and is a part of the homage to Bengali Bhasha Dibas, February 21, the international day for the celebration of the mother tongue, honouring the martyrs of the Bhasha Aandolan who died in Dhaka defending their language, Bangla, as the crucible of their culture and identity. It is a strange coincidence. 

The recognition that awards bestow came later than his popularity and the frenzy that erupted every year just around the Durga Puja, when without fail, Sankar would deliver a new book. Many were best sellers, and these were best sellers among Bengali readers across the world, regardless of their nationality. And he understood their attachment and delivered a book – Epaar Bangla, Opaar Bangla – a travelogue that begins with a quote from poet Jibananda Das’s Rupashi Bangla (Beautiful Bengal) and is dedicated to the........

© The Wire