Skip to main content

Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto Che Guevara


Che Guevara.. I am damn sure that you have heard this name but I am also quite sure that most of you, reading this article right now, don't know what he stands for. Most people don't know anything beyond this name, in spite of the often encounter with his legendary picture of above.

For all those, here is a little piece of trivia to start with. Ernesto "Che" Guevara was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. But the book I am going to tell you about is not about revolutionary Che. Its about a a 23 year old Ernesto Guevara, who along with his friend Granado, went on a long trip across Latin America. Before this trip, he empathized about the people around him, but this trip radicalized his thought process completely. In retrospection, this can be considered as a spark which turned in a wild fire that spread across nations to fight against economic inequalities. 

The Motorcycle Diaries initially centered around youthful adventures, and slowly unfolds, the thought transformations when those young lads observe the injustices in the life of their impoverished countrymen and are exposed to people and social classes they would have never encountered otherwise. To their surprise, the road presented to them both a genuine and captivating picture of Latin American identity. 

This travelogue lets you closely witness a self-discovery of a young boy from an upper-middle-class family who dreamt of a united Latin America and spent his entire life for the same cause.  

Quotes from the book:
"I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people."
"This is not a story of heroic feats, or merely the narrative of a cynic; at least I do not mean it to be. It is a glimpse of two lives running parallel for a time, with similar hopes and convergent dreams."

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Those Pricey Thakur Girls by Anuja Chauhan

So here is the plot. A beautiful, elegant girl with a little hold-back attitude, placed right in the heart of the Sophisticated (!) Delhi. A girl whose parents believe that someday she will come out of her shell and take on the world; who has four sisters and each with a different quirk; who lives with a cheating uncle, a dramatic aunt & a not-so-smart but caring cousin. Along comes a turn of events that shakes her life. Witouht knowing, she becomes a part of politically influenced content on mass media communication that influenced so many life. Placed at the time when newly independent India was slowly waking up from the long nap of british raj and getting a grip of the opportunities and hardships came along with the Independence. A 400 page book (failry long, but justified with the content) for that purely romantic side of you. Grab this book and get ready to go back in the 80s to spend some time around  a sprawling bungalow on New Delhi's posh Hailey Road with...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom

There is a quote in Srimad Bhagavad-Gita in Sanskrit which says “Jatasya Maranam Dhruvam”. It literally means that the star called Dhruv which rise in night has to set but the implied meaning of the saying is “That which is born shall die”. We know that our life is not eternal and there is an end for our life too, but we don’t want to think about our end or even the journey called life. We keep ourselves too busy in our goals and fight so hard to reach those goals that we forget to give time to the most important things in life.  Here is a story by Mitch Albom where he shares the lessons of life he learnt from his long-lost professor. In his last days, Professor Morrie, or what he would like to be called ‘Coach’, would act as a mentor for the writer and answer the questions which were bothering writer from long time. The questions which our generation doesn’t want to think about, may be because we are too scared to know the answer. The writer and his professor takes us ...
1 comment
Read more

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

A woman transcends through various roles and learnings in life. As a daughter, she learns to be a person responsible towards well-being of her family and society. As she grows, she gets into role of friend and learns to be a part of unit, a role of girlfriend/wife and learns to care for someone more than herself and ultimately as a mother she learns to live for someone else. But only sometimes she realizes that she has a responsibility of one more important person and that's her. She often forgets herself and becomes what her family, friends, colleagues or society wants her to be. Only a few realize that they need to embark on a search for who they really are and what do they really want from this wonderful gift from god i.e. The life. Elizabeth Gilroy was also educated, had a wonderful house that she and her husband together built into a home and a successful career as a writer. But by the age of 32, she realized that there was still some...
Post a Comment
Read more