One such human being, whose face can be seen plastered on T-shirts of university students, is Che Guevara. Today is his birthday.

I first heard Sunil Gangopadhyay’s চে গুয়েভারার প্রতি in my father’s voice, humming it whenever he felt like showing his revolutionary side.

I quite couldn’t fathom. Why the guilt? Just like any other lefty, he had a rebellious side in his 20s, and by the time he got married and I was born, all that revolutionary spirit had been turned into “capitalist ethics”, and he had become one of “those” people, for my father had embraced the ultimate evil, capitalism, and through his “unfairly” earned cents, I grew up.

Now as I look at the world, I truly understand Sunil Gangopadhyay’s guilt. And yes, চে, তোমার মৃত্যু ‘আমাকেও’ অপরাধী করে দেয়।

Everyone knows the story: a promising doctor turned revolutionary, growing up wanting to do good, realising his efforts were worthless in the cruel world led by the forever oppressors, the bourgeoisie.

However, where deeply Sunil Gangopadhyay’s guilt lies is somewhere beneath this identity.

The young man, born into privilege, having the courage to chase the unknown, to be what he dreamed of being, to say ‘NO’ to the world which was kind to him but cruel to his peers, to realise the unblinding nature of truth, that young man seems to be no more.

The non-existence of ‘Che’ has led the ‘lord capitalism’ to become increasingly unruly and demonic. That was the point of Sunil Gangopadhyay, and I see my own evolution, and the evolution of my leftist father; I too see his point.

The young man today is no Che, not even close. He is the product of capital, and he is well conditioned to bear that badge of ‘producthood’ with complete absent-mindedness and sometimes unconscious joy.

He, the modern young man, believes in hard work. He will not take days off, he’ll skip vacations and family time, and he’ll put off marrying the love of his life, because he has taught himself to believe that making something of himself (without knowing what “something” is) is the one principle to be achieved before making any sort of leisure palatable.

All good traits, no doubt. However, this mindset, the “slave mindset” coined by Marx, is a distorted one, in my view also.

Why, you ask? Maybe asking why is a litmus test in itself, a test that reveals that “working for thyself” is the end-all and be-all of human existence, and you, the hard worker, are blinded by it, blinded by the continuous pursuit of making yourself the pawn of your unknowing, uncaring masters. Masters who themselves were pawns once and have now climbed the upper echelons. Such is the allure of capital; it tells you that you too can become masters, just give away your prime years being a pawn, only then can you become a master yourself.

Che, and people like him, rejected this premise altogether. The question then turns to why? Why did Che reject this premise? He, by all accounts, was born a ‘Master’. A promising physician, who would do just fine minding his own business in the hospitals of Argentina. There were no “logical” reasons for his outbursts, no reason to leave behind a promising leisurely life.

He still did, maybe because he was too naive or outright crazy, or maybe because the allure of “working for thyself” wasn’t something that interested him at all. He, just like the Castros and the Mandelas, saw himself to be more than a pawn, not a master, but a liberator.

Sunil increasingly saw that this world was not producing liberators anymore.

“আমি এখনও প্রস্তুত হতে পারি নি, আমার অনবরত
দেরি হয়ে যাচ্ছে
আমি এখনও সুড়ঙ্গের মধ্যে আধো-আলো ছায়ার দিকে রয়ে গেছি।”

Sadly, as I write this, I too cannot see anyone carrying the flag up high. Everyone seems to be tangled with an agenda, increasingly wanting them to transform into masters. Liberation, in this day and age, is an outright farce. A farce proven too “illogical” for the rational world.

And again, that is why চে, তোমার মৃত্যু ‘আমাকেও’ অপরাধী করে দেয়।