Having lost his mother, who died during his childhood, he was brought up by his grandparents in Uttar Pradesh and spent his later life in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Dhaka.

He was a student of South Suburban School (Main) and enrolled for a BA at the Scottish Church College in Calcutta which he left prematurely to study[citation needed] agriculture in Santiniketan with a friend of Rabindranath Tagore, Leonard Elmhirst.

Because it did not hold his interest, he returned to education first on an undergraduate course in Dhaka and in 1925 at Asutosh College in Calcutta where he assisted the research of Dinesh Chandra Sen.[7] In particular, his creation of the character of GhanaDa [ঘনাদা] (meaning: 'Elder brother Ghana' in Bengali) won him public recognition.

Ghanada (Original name: Ghanashyam Das) is a middle-aged resident of a mess at 72, Banamali Naskar Lane in Kolkata, West Bengal with the four young members Shibu, Shishir, Gour and Sudhir (the narrator of the stories).

His expeditions are written in many novels and short-stories, such as: This character inspired Sunil Gangopadhyay to write his famous Kakababu series.