Why is Gabriel Garcia Marquez so popular in Kerala? This was the question asked in a book club meeting which I attended.
This set me thinking. Because it's not only Gaby, but Latin America as a whole which holds a fascination for this small state in South India. We have rabid fans of Argentina and Brazil football teams. Long after his death, Che Guavera holds demi-god status among the left-wing youth. And Latin American literature and movies always have an audience here.
I can only explain this using the word "ethos": the sum total of the culture of a people. Kerala shares with Latin America a curious mix of left-wing activism, rebellious individualism, deep religiosity and aggressive atheism. In fact, our state is a bunch of contradictions just as Latin America is - a land on the verge of collective schizophrenia.
Maybe, magical realism is the only way to map the mind of such a place. We had our first tryst with the genre much before Marquez, by the way: O. V. Vijayan's Khasak was here much before Macondo. And our writers continue to explore landscapes of the mind.
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