Anjan Dutta was raised in the mountains of
North Bengal. He had his schooling from
St. Paul's School in
Darjeeling. He completed his graduation of BA English literature from
Calcutta university In the late teens, he joined a group called
Open Theatre and in the early twenties performed plays translated from the works of renowned foreign playwrights like
Sartre,
Peter Weiss,
Jean Genet and
Bertold Brecht. The group clearly drew inspiration from
Nandikar, a highly active and already famous theatre group at the time. Due to politically sensitive content, they faced many obstructions in producing and performing their work, and eventually, the group discontinued its repertoire. Dutta was first selected for the feature film
Chalachitro, directed by renowned filmmaker
Mrinal Sen. The film and his performance were critically acclaimed at the
Venice Film Festival, but for unknown reasons, was never released commercially. Dutt said that he was more interested in doing art cinema than commercial mainstream cinema. After doing a few
art films that were not so commercially successful, including the critically well-received
Juganto, scarcity of job opportunities forced him to take up jobs in advertising and later as a journalist for the Kolkata-based daily,
The Statesman. == Singing career ==