Pioneer of urban Bengali fiction. Chronicler of Calcutta. Best-selling author whose appeal spanned generations. A writer whose cinematic translations remain timeless.

Mani Shankar Mukherjee, or Sankar, who passed away on Friday morning at a private hospital at the age of 92, embodied all of this and more. At his core, he was an unparalleled narrator of urban anxieties, aspirations, and dilemmas — of those from the working class to the corporate honcho.

He is survived by two daughters.

Mukherjee won the Ananda Purashkar (1969), the Sahitya Akademi Award (2021) and the Serar Sera (Best of the Best) award at the ABP Ananda Sera Bangali Awards (2022).

Still in his teens, Mukherjee worked as a clerk for the British barrister Noel Frederick Barwell at Calcutta High Court. That experience inspired his first book, Koto Ajanare (The Unknown), published in 1955, which brought him almost overnight fame. He never looked back.

He went on to write numerous novels, some of which were adapted for the screen. Two films from Satyajit Ray’s Calcutta trilogy — Seemabaddha (1971) and Jana Aranya (1976) — were based on his works.

But he was catapulted to stardom even before that, with Chowringhee. Set in the 1950s luxury hotel Shahjahan, it explores the lives of its staff and guests. In the film adaptation by Pinaki Bhushan Mukherjee, Subhendu Chatterjee played Sankar, a newcomer learning about professional life, love, heartbreak and harsh reality from the charismatic front-office boss Sata Bose, immortalised by Uttam Kumar.

Mukherjee portrayed the corporate world before anyone else, in a way few have matched. He had long stints in that world, first with tyre-maker Dunlop and later with the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, where, until recently, he would regale journalists with anecdotes.

A few years ago, at a promotional event for salmon ahead of the Bengali New Year, Mukherjee spoke of how fish and Bengalis were inseparable. He recalled a classroom couplet that young students would sing in the absence of teachers: “Likhibe poribe, moribe dukhe. Matsya dharibe, khaibe sukhe” (Write and read, you will die in sorrow. Catch fish, you will eat happily).

Barun Chanda, veteran actor and protagonist Shyamalendu Chatterjee in Seemabaddha, told Metro: “My first association with him was not because of films. I worked in advertising. Mani Shankar babu happened to be in the public relations department of Dunlop, the biggest manufacturer of tyres at the time. I have known him since then. It was a client-agency relation, very bonded. He would be on leave for some days to write for the Puja edition of magazines. For a year or two, the leave coincided with the preparation of the company’s annual report, which was a very big deal... Mani Shankar babu was the one who would sign the report, after going through every page.”

He continued: “We would go to his home in Howrah. He would treat us to nikhuti (mini dumplings made of cottage cheese, deep-fried to golden brown and soaked in sugar syrup). Those were my earliest memories of him. It was much before the release of Seemabaddha.”

Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee mourned his death, calling it an irreplaceable loss to Bengali literature. “I am deeply shocked and saddened by the passing of the renowned Bengali litterateur Mani Shankar Mukhopadhyay (Shankar). His death marks the fall of one of the brightest stars in the world of Bengali literature,” she said on X.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted in Bangla that he was “deeply saddened”.

Mukherjee’s younger daughter, Tanaya, said he had been suffering from age-related ailments, further complicated by a fall at home. “My father’s final wish was that his mortal remains should not be kept in a thanda ghor (mortuary). We will do the cremation immediately. We cannot wait... Even in the hospital, he asked for a pen and a notebook. He used to write. He had trouble speaking lately. He tried to explain with his eyes,” she said.

Smaranjit Chakraborty, a popular contemporary Bengali author, reflected on Sankar’s unmatched mass appeal.

“It is hard to find a parallel since Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. Even today, Sankar’s books are given as gifts at ceremonies... He wrote about the aspirations, heartbreaks, frustrations and longings of the common man. He saw the corporate world through the lens of a common man. His writing was never heavy-duty. His prose was lucid. The small pauses were so effective. He had the ability to deal with serious and sombre themes in an absorbing way,” he said.