diarios de motocicleta..

NOTE: Italics are the quotes from the book and movie "The Motorcycle Diaries"

What we had in common - our restlessness, our impassioned spirits, and a love for the open road.

Thus two young men (Doctors by profession) embarked upon a journey in 1952 across Latin America on a motorcycle, for around 6 months and eleven thousand kilometers. Reason? May be this:

How is it possible to feel nostalgia for a world I never knew?

There wasn’t any sponsorship; there wasn’t any desire for fame (which anyhow came). Just two restless souls wanted to go around and explore.

This isn’t a tale of heroics, nor is it merely some kind of ‘cynical account’; it isn’t meant to be, at least. It’s a chunk of two lives running parallel for a while, with common aspirations and similar dreams.

One country after another, these two young men kept struggling for meager necessities of life (food, water and shelter) and slept with every woman they could. Sometimes, got beaten and chased by the local husbands whose wives they were trying to seduce. One of these was suffering from acute asthma but had an indomitable will. This man was getting shaped into the greatest revolutionary of all times – Ernesto Guevara de la Serna.

What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land.

Books alone can’t do it. Listening to knowledge can’t do it. Being in contact with great people can’t do it. Unless a man stands above his limitations, and dares to find his own way, it doesn’t happen. Purpose is about chasing the dreams, not about being chased by the nightmares. Goal is what we find when we have the guts to walk alone; it’s not somewhere we reach following the herd and running away from fears.

You gotta fight for every breath and tell death to go to hell.

It was two years ago, I read about Che Guevara, the person who lived the life of millions of people in just forty years. It was one year ago, I read his Diarios de Motociclota – The Motorcycle Diaries. And it was one day ago, I watched the movie by the same name. Believe me – this man, his book and this movie – they have such a force in them that I can’t describe. In the last chapter of his journal Ernesto wrote this:

Wandering around our America has changed me more than I thought. I am not me any more. At least I'm not the same me I was.

And his following words echo in my brain like nothing else:

All of them, all those who can’t adapt – you and I, for instance – will die cursing the power which they helped bring about with often enormous sacrifices. Revolution is impersonal, so it will take their lives and even use their memory as an example or as an instrument to control the young people coming after them…you will die with your fist clenched and your jaw tense, the perfect manifestation of hatred and struggle, because you aren’t a symbol (some inanimate example), you are an authentic member of the society to be destroyed; the spirit of the beehive speaks through your mouth and moves through your actions. You are as useful as I am, but you don’t realize how useful your contribution is to the society that sacrifices you.

What else can I say - a must watch movie, a must read book, a man who was so ordinary by birth but so extraordinary by his guts and deeds.