There are some artists whose photographs grow older but whose faces do not seem to belong entirely to the past. Uttam Kumar is one of them. On 3 September 2026, the hundredth birth anniversary of Bengal's Mahanayak, I was at Nazrul Mancha for Shataborsher Aloy Mahanayak Uttam Kumar, an evening of music, memories and tribute to the actor who became much more than a film star. A hundred years after his birth, and decades after his passing, Uttam Kumar continues to inhabit Bengali memory with a remarkable immediacy. His films, songs, gestures, smile and unmistakable screen presence still seem close to us.
The evening
brought together actors, singers, musicians, technicians and members of Uttam
Kumar's family in a celebration that moved between recollection and music.
Organised as part of the centenary observances, the programme brought together
an impressive galaxy of performers, including Srikanta Acharya, Saikat Mitra,
Raghav Chatterjee, Lopamudra Mitra, Manomoy Bhattacharya, Swagatalakshmi
Dasgupta, Sreeradha Banerjee, Kharaj Mukherjee, Gourav Sarkar and Saheb
Chatterjee, among others. The stage became a meeting place between different
generations and between the Uttam Kumar remembered by those who knew him
personally and the Uttam Kumar who continues to belong to millions of viewers.
The ceremonial
inauguration had a particularly poignant presence. Veteran actress Sabitri
Chatterjee, one of Uttam Kumar's celebrated co-stars and someone who had known
him closely, lit the lamp.
There was something deeply appropriate about having Sabitri Chatterjee inaugurate an evening devoted to Uttam Kumar. She did not speak about an unreachable legend. She spoke about a man she had known, worked with and visited at home, a colleague who had become a friend.
In her
conversation with actor Kushal Chakraborty and actress Rimjhim Mitra, Sabitri
remembered Uttam Kumar with affection, humour and the intimacy of someone who
had shared both the professional and ordinary spaces of his life. She described
him as an exceptionally bhadro lok, a gentleman, and as a mayabi
abhineta, an actor with a magical quality.
But what struck me
particularly was her description of Uttam Kumar as an actor. According to
Sabitri, he did not merely stand before the camera and perform a role. He completely
immersed himself in the character he was playing. He entered the character
so fully that the person he was portraying seemed to take possession of him.
This quality, perhaps more than the conventional attributes of a star, explains
something of the extraordinary naturalness of his performances. The Uttam Kumar
who appeared on screen was never simply Uttam Kumar repeating himself. He could
inhabit different men, different emotional worlds and different circumstances
while retaining the elusive quality that made him unmistakably his own.
And then Sabitri brought laughter into the conversation with a delightful memory of their work together. She recalled that Uttam Kumar could not always look directly into her eyes while acting. He would tell her not to look into his eyes while performing. Sabitri, with her characteristic wit, would apparently respond by asking, in effect, what she was supposed to look at instead if she could not look into his eyes.
The story made
everyone laugh, but beneath the humour was something revealing about both
actors. Sabitri's eyes were extraordinarily expressive, and Uttam Kumar
understood the effect they could have on a scene. His discomfort was not the
discomfort of a star protecting himself from a co-star. It was the instinct of
an actor who understood how another actor's eyes could alter the emotional
truth of a moment.
Sabitri's association with Uttam Kumar extended beyond their films. They also worked together in theatre, and their friendship reached into their family lives. She had visited his home, and he had visited hers. She remembered eating at Uttam Kumar's house, while he too enjoyed the food prepared in her family home. She has spoken affectionately of his fondness for food cooked by her sister. There will never be anyone like him she said. These are the details that bring a legend back to human scale. Behind the photographs, posters and enormous public adulation was a man who could visit a friend's house, sit down for a home-cooked meal and become simply Uttamda.
Uttam Kumar was born Arun Kumar Chatterjee on 3 September 1926. Before Bengal knew him as Uttam Kumar, there was Arun Kumar, a young man who had wanted to become a singer. He had a good voice and a deep connection with music. That musical dimension of his personality would remain with him throughout his life and eventually become an important part of the cinematic world he inhabited. Perhaps that is why the musical tribute at Nazrul Mancha felt so integral to the evening rather than merely ornamental.
Kalyan Sen Barat
and his Calcutta Choir presented a collage of songs from Uttam Kumar's films,
bringing together melodies that have survived not simply as film songs but as
part of the emotional vocabulary of Bengali life.
The first notes of a familiar song can do something that a speech cannot. They can return a person to an era in an instant. The songs associated with Uttam Kumar and his films carry memories of cinema halls, radio programmes, family gatherings, childhood afternoons and evenings when Bengali families sat together before television sets. Many of us know the melodies even when we cannot immediately remember the name of the film. That evening, the songs seemed to open one memory after another.
A galaxy of
singers then paid tribute to Uttam Kumar through songs from his films. Srikanta
Acharya, Saikat Mitra, Raghav Chatterjee, Lopamudra Mitra, Manomoy
Bhattacharya, Swagatalakshmi Dasgupta, Sreeradha Banerjee, Kharaj Mukherjee,
Gourav Sarkar and Saheb Chatterjee were among those who brought their own
voices to this enormous musical legacy.
For me, Saikat
Mitra's presence carried a particularly intimate connection with the evening's
theme. Saikat had known Uttam Kumar through his father, the legendary singer
Shyamal Mitra, and had visited Uttam Kumar with his father on the actor's
birthdays. Such memories belong to another Kolkata, when actors, singers and
musicians often knew one another not merely professionally but through homes,
friendships and family connections.
Each singer brought something different to the songs. Some performances evoked the original films; others gave the familiar melodies another emotional colour. But the important thing was that the songs were still alive. They had not become museum pieces. This is perhaps the most remarkable thing about Uttam Kumar's cultural legacy. His films belong to particular decades, but the emotions within them have travelled far beyond those decades.
The evening also remembered the people who worked behind the stars. Technicians who had worked with Uttam Kumar during his time were given financial assistance and medical support through the initiative associated with the centenary observance and Peerless Group of Hospitals. It was a meaningful gesture because the history of cinema is usually remembered through actors, directors and famous songs, while the technicians who helped create those films remain largely invisible.
A tribute to Uttam
Kumar therefore became, in this moment, something broader than a celebration of
celebrity. It acknowledged some of the people who belonged to the world that
made Bengali cinema possible.
And then came the final, deeply personal moment of the evening. Uttam Kumar's close family members came onto the stage for the cutting of his centenary birthday cake.
I had been
watching the evening through my own eyes, taking photographs and recording
fragments of the performances. Later, looking at those photographs and videos
again, I realised that what stayed with me was not one single performance or
one particular song. It was the accumulation of memories.
Sabitri Chatterjee remembering the man behind the Mahanayak. The story of his reluctance to meet her eyes while acting. Her description of the actor who immersed himself completely in every character. The songs returning to the stage through the voices of a new generation of singers. The memory of Saikat Mitra visiting Uttam Kumar with his father, Shyamal Mitra. The technicians being remembered. And finally, his family cutting a cake for a man who had been born exactly a hundred years earlier.
A matinee idol is usually associated with glamour, romance and the adoration of audiences. Uttam Kumar certainly possessed all of these. But the passage of a hundred years reveals something larger. His endurance cannot be explained by stardom alone. He became part of the emotional landscape of Bengal.
For generations, people have found something of themselves in his characters, his films and his songs. Lovers have borrowed his language of romance; families have recognised their own joys and conflicts in his films; audiences have laughed with him, cried with him and grown older with his image. Perhaps this is why his centenary did not feel like an exercise in looking backwards.
At Nazrul Mancha,
Uttam Kumar was not merely being remembered.
He was being
heard.
He was being sung.
He was being
spoken about by someone who had actually known him.
And for one
evening, through Sabitri Chatterjee's memories, through the songs of his films,
through the voices of contemporary singers and through the presence of his
family, the legend became human again.
A hundred years after Arun Kumar Chatterjee was born, Bengal still calls him Mahanayak. And perhaps the most beautiful tribute is that the songs have not stopped.
Books on Uttam Kumar
English
- Uttam Kumar: A Life in Cinema — Sayandeb Chowdhury
Bengali
- Amar Ami — An Autobiography of Uttam Kumar
- Matinee Idol Uttam Kumar - Jayanta Kumar Ghosh
About the Author
Susmita Mukherjee
is an Indian author based in Kolkata and a lifelong wanderer at heart. She
writes about places, people, journeys, music and the small human moments that
give a city its character. Alongside fiction and poetry, she writes travelogues
and personal essays inspired by her encounters.
A trained classical vocalist, Susmita has
always been drawn to the arts. Her fiction explores labour, resilience,
displacement, family and the quiet complexities of human relationships, and has
appeared in publications including Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), Muse
India, Fractured Lit, Sky Island Journal, Kitaab
International, Setu, Fictive Dream and Flash Fiction
Magazine. Her short story “Fuchka Geometry” won Second Place in the
Inkspot Short Story Competition 2025–26.
Her debut poetry collection, When the
Earth Sang of Us: A Meditation on Love, Life and Nature, is published by
BookLeaf Publishing.
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