Che Today

I recently visited a curio shop in Jaigaon. On my way back home from work one day, a wonderful Che Guevara Portrait engraved on a cotton scarf had caught my eye. I had instantly decided to gift it to my Father, who idolises the Cuban Legend.

It was better than I expected. Che Guevara imprinted in Black on a bright red background. I had no doubts; Father would love it. After bargaining in vain for 5 minutes, the price was decided. While the shop owner was gift wrapping my item, I had a strange conversation with him.

“So, You are a huge fan of Western Music, I see!” – He started with a wacky smile.

“Yeah, you can say so, I like listening, but I’m not a huge fan”

“Oh really?!” – He sounded surprised

“You know,” he continued,” unless you are a huge fan of Western Music, you don’t buy his posters mate! That man is superb, I love his music!”

Che Guevara, Music? For a moment there I had a feeling that entire “head phone on my ears all the time” everyone had constantly warned me about had really caused acoustic problems for me. According to his father, Ernesto Che Guevara had a deaf ear to music. He had a great taste of poetry and always carried a Pablo Neruda collection with him.

“You see,” he had more to say,” I think he should perform with some pop stars like Britney maybe.......”

With life-saving efforts, I paid him and ran for sanity.

Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna, commonly known as Che Guevara, El Che, or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, politician, author, physician, military theorist, and guerrilla leader, but not a music enthusiast. After death, his stylized image became an omnipresent countercultural symbol worldwide. This was of course an Alberto Korda photograph of him entitled Guerrillero Heroico, which was also declared the most famous photograph of the world. This photograph can be found at various places; from big museums to my father’s study, T-shirts across the globe, wrist-bands and caps, everywhere. At first look it seems too good to be true; everyone seems to be following Che’s ideology towards life.

Every second person in the world has seen this picture but how many of us actually know about this Latin American Legend? Che Guevara was a medical student when he took a trip across Latin America that changed his life. He witness poverty and grief of his people and set out to bring a change. Quiet fittingly, in his journey he befriended Fidel Castro and together they brought freedom to the Cuban mass. Later on El Che went on to continue his struggle against capitalist discrimination and was eventually caught and killed in Bolivia by C.I.A. A man can be killed, but his thoughts live on and so did Che achieve immortality.

Che Guevara was a workaholic; he is known to be a firm believer of voluntary work and also led by example, himself working on his day off. He is also known to have worked continuously for 36 hours, calling midnight meetings and eating on the run. Along with his work Che also wrote a lot of publications. It was during his busy schedule that his wife Aleida encouraged him to listen to classical music, which he began to love, with his favourite being Beethoven. That was all the music that can be associated with Che Guevara.

I guess not a lot of people care about all these and instead, Che Guevara continues to live on, remembered by communist and cultural enthusiast alike, although sometimes in manners which I doubt he would be proud of.

Source: Wikipedia