He was the founding editor of the widely influential magazine Kalkandu; it published fiction, articles about state politics and Tamil cinema, and pages of factoids.
The novels often contain a good deal of factual information about the settings, which served to educate the Tamil audience about countries to which, at the time, relatively few Indians could obtain visas or afford to travel.
In the books, Shankarlal frequently travels with his wife Indra and his servants, Kathrikai (the nickname means "eggplant", a reference to his fat belly and tuft of hair) and Manickam.
In his journal Kalkandu, he often substantiated his facts and statistics with authorities such as Encyclopædia Britannica and Guinness Book of World Records besides other scholarly works.
In order to obtain more facts, details and statistics on any issue or matter, he often went into the references cited by authoritative works or compendia of information; and so much so, Tamilvanan was considered a journalistic genius well ahead of his time.