KOCHI: TJS George never believed in letting talent go to waste. When writer S Jayachandran Nair walked out of the then-popular literary and cultural weekly Kala Kaumudi, TJS saw an opening that would change the course of Malayalam journalism.
At the urging of his close friend and writer M P Narayana Pillai — known affectionately as 'Nanappan' — TJS moved quickly. Pillai had written to him, insisting, “We should not allow Jayachandran to lie idle. His calibre as editor and writer must be used.” Together, the two men persuaded Jayachandran Nair to take charge of a brand-new weekly out of Thiruvananthapuram.
Thus was born Samakalika Malayalam Varika on May 16, 1997, launched as a sister publication of The New Indian Express. Jayachandran came on board with a promise: he would bring to Varika the best voices of Kala Kaumudi. He delivered, persuading artist Namboothiri, literary critic M. Krishnan Nair, with his cult column Sahitya Varaphalam, and calligrapher Narayana Bhattathiri to cross over.
With that single stroke, Varika arrived fully armed — a cultural powerhouse under Jayachandran’s stewardship from 1997 to 2012. TJS, who gave him a free hand to run the magazine, contributed his own unforgettable essay, Ghosha Yatra (Procession). That work, later included in his autobiography of the same name, won him the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 2009.
TJS himself was no stranger to launching publications. Years before, he had founded Asiaweek in Hong Kong, setting a benchmark for Asian journalism. In a telling gesture, all the issues of Asiaweek from his editorship have been donated to the EMS Cooperative Library in Ernakulam, preserving a slice of Asian media history for future generations.
When Varika celebrated its 25th year, TJS recalled that the weekly’s launch had coincided with another milestone: the start of his Point of View column in The New Indian Express. After contributing over 1,300 essays across a quarter-century, he bid farewell in June 2022 with a final piece titled Now is the Time to Say Goodbye. “The readers may have gotten tired reading my piece,” he quipped to editor Saji James, before quietly bowing out.
TJS, who passed away in Bengaluru on Friday at 97, leaves behind more than books and columns. He leaves behind institutions — publications like Samakalika Malayalam Varika that grew out of his instinct to spot talent and his belief in the power of editorial conviction.
