TJS George, who left us the other day, was perhaps the last of the great journalists from Kerala born before Independence who went on to make an indelible mark on India’s national media landscape. That illustrious league had included names such as the brothers George and Pothen Joseph, Karunakara Menon, T.M. Nair, M. Sivaram, Edathatta Narayanan, Shankar, C.P. Ramachandran, B.G. Verghese, and O.V. Vijayan.

Like most in that distinguished list, TJS spoke truth to power till his last breath. His integrity—both professional and personal—was beyond reproach. Yet, he stood apart in one crucial respect: he was the first editor in independent India to be arrested for sedition. He also holds the rare distinction of having founded a publication abroad -Asiaweek- that was later acquired by none other than Time magazine.

Despite a long and glittering career, TJS lacked the common journalistic vanity—the urge to talk about oneself. What he truly excelled in was writing extraordinary profiles of the innumerable people he met: presidents and prime ministers, film stars and musicians, crooks and commoners. Like a sharp-eyed detective, he explored the complex layers of their minds and lives, revealing their good, bad, and ugly sides with equal flair.

A close friend of many of my family elders and a personal hero to me, TJS often indulged me in long, generous conversations. Yet, the man with that mischievous twinkle in his piercing eyes would turn to humour whenever I tried to make him speak about his own journey. He refused to call his marvellous Malayalam memoir Ghoshayatra autobiographical. “It’s about the people I met,” he would insist. “Through them, I’ve tried to tell the story of their world and their times.” He swore he would never write an autobiography—he simply loathed talking about himself.

Perhaps it is this self-effacing nature that makes the long chapter in Ghoshayatra about his 1965 arrest, while he was Editor of The Searchlight in Patna, all the more significant. Since he may never have written about it in English, let me recount that remarkable episode—with the disclaimer that my retelling can hardly match his wit or grace.

In 1965, TJS, then in his mid-thirties, married and with two small children, took over as........

© Mathrubhumi English