His father, Ashutosh Chakraborty, was an employee of the Indian Railways and the family had to move around various places in undivided Bengal.

It was through his uncle's contacts that Tulsi was able to watch the finest actors of the generation at work and this fostered his own ambitions to become a singer-actor.

Before launching in theatre, Tulsi Chakraborty engaged himself in a number of odd-jobs, starting from dish-washer in a small North Calcutta eatery to working as a clown in a circus in Burma (now Myanmar).

One of Chakraborty's notable performances was in Sharey Chuattor, which was the debut film of the popular pair of Bengali cinema: Suchitra Sen and Uttam Kumar.

In Parash Pathar directed by Satyajit Ray, he acted in the lead role as Paresh Chandra Dutta.