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 fearless young people who lost their lives defending their language and succeeded in establishing a country, Bangladesh.Honoured by the Sahitya Akademi in 2021, a belated recognition of his formidable oeuvre, creating characters who have become part of the Bengali language like idioms or metaphors, Sankar was given the Bankim Purashkar by the West Bengal government for Gharer Madhye Ghar (Room Within a Mansion), the last of the trilogy following Koto Ajaanare and Chowringhee, and the Ananda Purashkar for being the best of the best – “Sera’r sera”. The awards were given as a matter of form; Sankar had moved beyond the formal by becoming an icon. If the Arunava Sinha translation of Chowringhee delivered him to a global audience, it also set Sinha on his journey as a prodigious translator of Bengali and Indian language writings. It is difficult to write about Sankar because he led a double life, in the open rather than in secret. He had mastered the art of separating his persona as the best selling author, who created characters that became metaphoric: like Satta Bose of Chowringhee, Tutul and Shyamalendu of Seemabaddha or Natabar Mitter, a shady broker/lobbyist and Mrs Ganguli of Jana Aranya and the “consummate PR man,” who as a colleague, Adity (Syam) Dua, former PR manager of ITC, said, “whatever he did was done with commitment and zest.” She recalled, “When he was well in his eighties, I saw him directing staff on the positioning of promotional material for Music World then on Park Street under the blazing June midday sun.” For PR professionals, “a legend has passed on. An era has ended.” The legend was of his making. Unless one knew that the shortish, tubby, balding, modest but sharp eyed and smiling man standing so effacingly behind R.P. Goenka, and later Sanjeev Goenka, ready with the press releases for distribution, was the legendary author of best sellers, Sankar, one could be fooled into believing he was merely the PR man anxious to do his job to the best of his abilities. He was a star in the world of Bengali literature, but he would visit newspaper offices to distribute press releases. Yet, he was no pushover. If a journalist spent more than the time limited for his visit to Manisankar’s office, he would be politely but firmly escorted out. There were periods during the calendar year when Manishankar Mukherjee disappeared and Sankar took over. Everyone who had reasons for connecting to the PR man was told “he is on annual leave;” the uninformed did not know it, but that was his time with his next new work. And the Bengali publishing industry were on tenterhooks during that time knowing that he would deliver as scheduled, but nevertheless anxious, because the Durga Puja book season, including the fat volumes of “annual numbers” of the much sought after journals, like Desh, needed his book for boosting sales. Mukherjee told no tales, even though he wrote about his first employer, the last British barrister practicing in the Calcutta high court, Noel Frederick Barwell, descendent of the Richard Barwell, member of the Supreme Council of Bengal of the East India Company, who supervised the construction of the landmark Writers’ Buildings, completed in 1780. The barrister reportedly told Manishankar that had he owned the Writers’ Buildings, he would have bequeathed it to him. It was his discretion and his extraordinary ability to keep his personas compartmentalized that made him a close confidant of R.P. Goenka, after the Group took over Dunlop India. Howrah was Sankar’s home, where he would return after every work day. Until infirmity and congestion compelled him to change his address to South Kolkata, that is where he lived in a modest home and produced his intricate chronicles of Kolkata’s life and people. The characters in his book reflect his grounded sensibility; they are people, ordinary, humdrum, angst ridden. That is why when Satyajit Ray made Seemabaddha, the English title was Company Limited, because it was about an average, but ambitious and intelligent, young man who was caught in a dilemma, should compromise with his principles to scale up the corporate ladder and lose respect as an individual. The same dilemma reappears in Jana Aranya, literally translated as ‘Urban Jungle’, that Satyajit Ray chose to title The Middleman, for what critics have said was his most “cynical, ruthless film.” Sankar, however, was also a raconteur, who was tickled by the absurd and the non sequitur. He would invite people he liked to his office in Victoria House, a large colonial era building with a copper dome that houses the offices of CESC, once upon a time known as the Calcutta Electric Supply Company, to eat “muri” (puffed rice) a common man’s staple as a snack or a filler for the poor and hungry and then offer delectable. He even wrote a book, Rasabati, the epicurean art, in which he chronicled tales about how chhena balls were (curdled milk) fried in ghee, soaked in sugar syrup acquired the name “Lady Canning,” spouse of Charles John Canning, the last Governor General and first Viceroy of India. He was invariably “suited-booted” in his work place, and just as invariably in a dhoti and panjabi as Bengali’s call the kurta, in his author avatar. Perhaps these transformations deserve a literary work or an academic dig through.Shikha Mukherjee is a Kolkata-based commentator.