Ahindra Choudhury was born on 6th August, the year of 1896. He was a popular actor and director of Bengali theatre. Ahindra Choudhury left school in Kolkata, mesmerized by a production of Dwijendra Lal Roy`s Shah Jahan. That was a role that became his first, for an amateur group. He is said to have later appeared as Shah Jahan nearly 2000 times. His professional debut was for the Art Theatre at the Star, in Aparesh Chandra Mukhopadhyay`s Kamarjun i.e. "Kama and Arjun" in 1923. This made this theatre history by running for 260 nights.
Later he associated with virtually all the major playhouses in Kolkata. The names are Manomohan, Minerva where he joined as manager in 1930, Rungmahal, Natyaniketan, and Natyabharati. Mahendra Guptas Kankabatir ghat i.e. "Kankabati`s Ghat" in 1941 saw one of his best acting accomplishments. His inborn histrionic talent lay in characterizing different types by immaculately improvising their identifying traits. Besides Shah Jahan, the innumerable roles synonymous with his name include Selecus in Roy`s Chandragupta, Aurangzeb in Bankim Chandra Chatterjee`s Rajsinha dramatized by Amritalal Basu, Kama in Kamarjun, Chandrababu in Tagore`s Chirakumar sabha i.e. `Celibates` Club`, Adhikari in Chatterjee`s Kapalkundala dramatized by Girish Ghosh, etc. Jatin in Tagore`s Grihaprabesh i.e. `House warming`, and Paresh-babu in Tagore`s Gora dramatized by Naresh Mitra were also some of the great performances of Ahindra Choudhury.
He was a pioneer in make-up; he also acted in films notably as the father in Doctor in 1941 and became a pathfinder in formulating and introducing theatre curricula in Indian higher education, serving as Dean of the Theatre and Fine Arts Faculty, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata. His two-volume autobiography named Nijere haraye khunji i.e. `Searching for My Lost Self` in 1962-71, regales with anecdotes and documentation of life behind the curtains of Bengali theatre.
This fabled artist died in the year of 1974.
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