Manoj Mitra did not live in his Salt Lake para as a celebrity. He believed in simple living and lived as one of them, his neighbours say. The thespian, who called AG Block home, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 85 at Calcutta Heart Clinic & Hospital where he had been admitted.
“He was a respected neighbour who attended block committee meetings in his younger days and performed on the local stage. He came to our house when my mother died and also attended my wedding,” recalls block resident Gaurabdeep Bhattacharya, whose father Nandagopal Bhattacharya was a mayoral council member in the CPM-led Bidhannagar Municipality.
Sukhendu Khamaru, from the neighbouring Baisakhi Abasan, recalls meeting him regularly on morning walks till he was fit enough, about two-three years ago. In 2012, Mitra had led an agitation against the construction of the AMP Vaisaakkhi mall a stone’s throw away when cracks had appeared in his house along with that of a neighbour’s, he adds. Mitra never visited the mall on principle.
Another Baisakhi resident who became close to him in recent years was Jyoti Basu. The director of the group Dekhashona had expressed his desire to do plays under his baton. “He was willing to give me the chance but I had to back out on hearing his group Sundaram’s rehearsal pad was in Gariahat,” Basu recalls.
Basu’s biggest regret is not being able to bring him in 2022 to watch his production Hanumati Pala, which Mitra had written long back. “He was eager to see how I had treated his comic take on what would have happened had Rama sent Hanumati instead of Hanuman to Lanka as his messenger. I had told him I had used contemporary songs,” Basu says. Mitra was at the Book Fair from where Basu was supposed to fetch him to Okakura Bhavan. But faulty mobile network at the fair meant by the time he finally got through there were minutes left for the curtain to rise. “And I was in the first scene. I went home the day after to seek his apology,” he says.
Basu says he would visit him every year with sweets after Vijaya Dashami and cherishes listening to Mitra, a Masters in philosophy and a professor of drama at Rabindra Bharati University, hold forth on the theory of aesthetics.
Before Puja, Basu was hospitalised for a day. “When I was being released from Bidhannagar Subdivisional Hospital, I heard he had been admitted the same day but I was too weak to see him. There was so much pressure of back-to-back performances that I kept pushing back my Vijaya visit till the day I went and met only his daughter and son-in-law. They said Mitra had come home but had to be admitted again. I never got a chance to bid him goodbye,” he laments.
Mitra was in touch with other theatre enthusiasts of Salt Lake as well. “He was a friend of Pannalal Moitra of the Soubhanik theatre group. Since Pannada was our guide, he would sometimes bring him to watch our plays. In fact, it was Manoj babu who had named our group,” said FD Block resident Monika Mukherjee, a founder-member of Salt Lake Theatre.
Mitra, the playwright, is sure to live on through his plays that remain popular on the Durga puja stage across blocks, with Chokhe Angul Dada and Kenaram Becharam being frequent choices for children. “At FD Block, this year itself we staged his Bonjyotsna. Our earlier productions of his plays include Dampati, Alakanandar Putrakanya and of course, Sajano Bagan,” Mukherjee says.