India, Feb. 20 -- A towering figure in Bengali literature whose words mapped the ambitions and moral compromises of urban India, Mani Shankar Mukhopadhyay, better known as Shankar, passed away on Friday at a private hospital on the outskirts of south Kolkata at 92.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders mourned his death, saying Shankar's passing had left a void that could never be filled.

"Bengal's cultural world has suffered an irreparable loss," Banerjee wrote on X.

Born into a middle-class family in Howrah, Shankar authored around a hundred stories and novels. Among them, Simabadhya and Jana Aranya were adapted into landmark films by Satyajit Ray in 1971 and 1975, respectively, as part ...