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Recollections from a sojourn

Musings: K.P. Ramanunni, writer.

Kozhikode: The Chinese economy is on the fast track of growth, no doubt, but modern Chinese literary scene is definitely not, says K.P. Ramanunni, author, who returned last week from China. Chinese writers are yet to shed the inhibitions which became part of their artistic personality when China was ruled with an iron hand by the communists, Ramanunni says.

The author of popular novels such as What the Sufi Said says that the Leftists in India have more freedom of expression than writers in China.

“The democratisation that can be seen in the Left movement in our country has not happened in China, though that country is in a globalisation mode,” the writer says.

Ramanunni went to China as part of a 10-member delegation of Indian writers at the invitation of the Chinese Writers’ Association under a programme arranged by the Kendra Sahitya Akademi. M.T. Vasudevan Nair and M. Mukundan were among the Malayalam writers who visited China earlier under this programme.

Ramanunni was the only writer from Kerala in that delegation. The Indian team was in China from September 10 to 19.

He found the Chinese writers formal, diplomatic and sometimes evasive in their responses to questions from the visiting writers. This was particularly evident while fielding questions about globalisation of the Chinese economy and the Tiananmen Square incident in Beijing in 1989 when protests by students against the Chinese communist party were crushed with an iron hand by the government.

The Chinese writers the Indian delegates met did not speak English. The language barrier considerably restricted the interaction between them and the visitors from India.

The interest of Chinese writers in India seemed to be restricted to Rabindranath Tagore and the Buddha. “But one tends to forget all these in the warmth of Chinese hospitality, especially the Chinese food, which is by any standards a gourmet’s delight,” he says.

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