He worked for The Statesman, Calcutta's oldest English-language daily, as feature writer, film critic, correspondent, and associate editor.
Datta currently lives in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey, near New York City, where he works as an Editor for South Asia Journal.
He attends many poetry readings in Manhattan and Queens and is a famous figure among the Indians and New York poets.
[citation needed] After coming back to freedom in triumph, Datta went on an expedition on a sailing boat from Calcutta to Sri Lanka.
His son, Mallinath Datta, is an executive at a large advertising agency and also an independent film director who directed Full Masti.