Mani Shankar Mukherjee

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Briefly

February 21, 2026: The Times of India

Kolkata : Acclaimed author Mani Shankar Mukherjee, better known as Shankar, was the top-selling Bengali author since the 1960s. He is survived by his daughters, Mausumi and Tanaya.


Known equally for his prolific output and deep insight into the psyche of the Bengali bhadralok class, he was also one of the foremost authors of his generation whose writings fuelled masterpieces on celluloid. Among them were Satyajit Ray’s ‘Seemabaddha’ and ‘Jana Aranya’.


Shankar’s writing seemed effortless, but it concealed many struggles. The second of 11 brothers and sisters, Shankar and his siblings fell into penury after the death of their father in 1947. Eight years later, he penned his first book, ‘Kato Ajanare’, in the light of a hurricane lamp. “We lived in a rented place in...Howrah’s Shibpur. The electricity supply was severed when we were unable to pay the bill,” he recounted in 2021. Seven years later, Shankar wrote ‘Chowringhee’, recognised as a cult classic and translated into 18 languages. 
Shankar found critical acclaim as well as mass popularity. Honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Award, he also wrote biographies of Bengali saints like Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo.


He was equally popular as a travel writer and could claim to be the primary travelogue writer in Bengali, exploring places in the US, the UK, France, Germany and Switzerland. Often serialised in Bengali magazines, these pieces gave the cashstrapped middle-class — then confined to outings to Digha, Puri (and sometimes Darjeeling and Kalimpong) — a glimpse of the world beyond India. That a man who grew up in the bylanes of Howrah could write about European wine and cheddar was also a part of the appeal. 


In his early years, Shankar worked as a clerk to Noel Frederick Barwell, the last British barrister at Calcutta HC. After Barwell’s death, he took up public relations as a profession. After a short stint at Philips, he joined Eastern Railway, followed by Dunlop, and finally the RPG Group where he worked for three-and-a-half decades. 


“Very few people could write equally well in both English and Bengali. He had acquired fame as an author. But he was also a doyen in the corporate world,” recounted Biswarup Mukherjee, who worked with Shankar for a decade at Victoria House, the CESC headquarters, and was present when Bangiya Sahitya Parishad Samman was handed to him in Dec 2024.


“When I started, he used to tutor me, scold me, tell me what to wear and what not to wear. His demise is a personal loss,” said industrialist and RPSG group chairman Sanjiv Goenka. 
Bengal without Shankar’s stories would have seen less of the world and would have been less Bengali.