
Khaled Choudhury

Khaled Choudhury (20 December 1919 – 30 April 2014) was a theatre personality and artist of Bengal. He worked for various directors of both Bengali and Hindi plays, including Sombhu Mitra, Tripti Mitra, and Shyamanand Jalan in various capacities — creating the Stage, sets and costumes and later as Music Director. He was a bachelor. He has been awarded the Padma Bhushan for his contribution to theatre in India's Republic Day Honours List on 26 January 2012. He died on 30 April 2014 in Kolkata.
Family background.
Khaled Choudhury was born on 20 December 1919 in Karimganj, which was then in undivided Assam, a State of British India. His father was Chandranath Dutta Choudhury and his mother was Hem Nalini. His grandmother's brother, Gurusaday Dutt, had named him Chirakumar, but his father later changed the name to Chiraranjan Dutta Choudhury. This name he changed in 1943 to Khaled Choudhury (though he did not change his religion), as a consequence of strained relationship with his father. He moved to Kolkata (then Calcutta) in 1945. He died there after an illness on 30 April 2014.
Contributions to theatre.
In 1945, he joined the Bharatiya Gananatya Sangha (Indian People's Theatre Association). His contributions in the form of artistic talent in the fields of drawing, painting and music (both folk and western) enabled him to be involved in "Shahider Daak", a shadow theatre in 1947. He joined Bohurupee in 1953.
List of plays in which Khaled Choudhury had been involved primarily as Stage Director are:
Folk music and folklore research.
Khaled Choudhury got involved with folk music and folk-lore research in the 1960s. He was Secretary of the Folk Music and Folklore Research Institute at its inception in 1965, which collected a lot of folk music from eastern India. This entire collection was subsequently donated to the Lokasanskriti o Adivasisanskriti Kendra (Centre for Folk and Adivasi Culture), Govt. of West Bengal.