RIP, Mr. Editor!
Govindrao Talwalkar was the epitome of an old school, soft spoken, scholarly editor
Govindrao Talwalkar, 92, an extraordinary Marathi editor of our times, passed away in America on Tursday.
He edited Mumbai's famous Maharashtra Times very successfully for over two dacades and served a large and elite Marathi readership in the country. He was a Royist thinker and a voracious reader besides a classic political columnist. Soft-spoken Talwalkar was known for his highly-read editorials that would run full length of a newspaper page and in double column --unlike today's two-para edits we are used to read in different language/English dailies!
Talwalkar's love for classic English literature was just fabulous. He also wrote authoritatively on partition's history. Through his prolific writings in Marathi he had opened up a new window to the world of knowledge for his readers.
I started reading MT during my school days in Indore in (mid-70s) due to the inspiration of my mother who hailed from Pune. MT was known for its English books column, rich Sunday supplement and a strong Edit page which, in the 70s, would write about foreign affairs issues, among other things. Its sports editor VV Karmarkar was also an institution unto himself, just like the great Talwalkar himself.
I may like to recall here that for Prabhash Joshi's column 'Kaagad Kaare', Hindi readers used to await Sunday Jansatta, similarly Talwalkar fans in thousands would wait for Sunday supplement and for his in-depth and well argued editorials, daily.
He has written many books. Some of the collections of his editorials are worth possessing in one's personal library. I have many of his books with me. Occassionally, he would also write on the edit pages of the ToI. In my 35 years of journalism, I have not come across such a scholarly, low-profile editor in a language daily who dominated the collective Marathi psyche onsistently for years together. MT and Express Group's Loksatta were arch rivals in Mumbai--just like Time and Newsweek in the US in 80s. Politicians cutting across political lines would hold him in a rare awe.
