author mani shankar mukherjee whose initial years as a writer was fraught with struggles is unfazed by the spotlight on him again for being declared to be receiving the sahitya akademi award when we reached out to the veteran writer to know how he would like to encapsulate his journey and the award he said theres no emotion or feeling as such after hearing the announcement giving awards is the jurys business and receiving them is the writers work an author shouldnt depend on the momentary glory and media glare rewards brickbats and indifference are all part of any authors journey the octogenarian author whose first book was published in 1954 still reminisces his early days in kolkata and how he struggled for years to reach his present stature i had to stop studying after my father died when he shifted to howrah from our native village in bonogram i feel proud to say that author bibhutibhushan bandyopadhyay hailed from the same village i even worked as a clerk to support my family its by accident that i became an author he shared popularly called shankar the author is happy that he got to live a life of a writer without making much ado about himself or his work this is the only profession where people get to leave their imprints especially after they die authors live even after their death but reforming the society is not an authors job their only concern should be to improve the culture and literature i would like to tell young authors who write in bengali not to be afraid if still so many people speak in bangla we will survive like my work has been translated in many foreign languages their work will too find global acceptance he said