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Malayali mindset

Staff Reporter

What is the essential Malayali mindset? Malayalam writer M. Mukundan appears to have found an answer. While China was open-minded towards rapid changes happening in the world, the Malayali mindset appeared to be fossilised, he said at a recent function at the Press Club here. More concerned with the `fossils of the past,' the Malayalis, he said, were destined to live with hartals and bandhs.

Mr. Mukundan also found magic in the social and cultural fields of Kerala. "Cultural and social life here is full of magical realism that we find in the novels of Latin American writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.''

If multiplicity of voices was the hallmark of post-modernist literature, political scene in the State was certainly becoming post-modernist, according to him. The writer, however, reserved his harshest attack for writers.

Writing had now become a professional activity and writers were trying to get close to centres of power, he said. It was very difficult to resist temptations, he said adding how he had so far succeeded in resisting the suggestions for transferring one of his novels into a movie.

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