It was by accident that I chanced upon a beautiful book titled “My Father’s Notebook”. The book was written by Iranian author Kader Abdolah in Dutch and translated wonderfully into English by Susan Massotty, whose most famous translation is “The Diary of Anne Frank”.

Kader Abdolah is not the author’s real name; the book says it is a pen name created “in memoriam to his friend who died under the persecution of the current Iranian regime.” The book can be called autobiographical as it follows the life story of the author, one that is even more fascinating than any work of fiction.

As a student of physics in Tehran, he joined a secret leftist party that “fought against the dictatorship of the Shah and the subsequent dictatorship of the Ayotollahs.” After writing for an illegal journal and publishing two books in Iran, clandestinely of course, he moved to The Netherlands as a political refugee at the invitation of the United Nations. Then he began writing in Dutch and is the author of three novels, two collections of short stories and many works of non-fiction.

“My Father’s Notebook” is the story of Ishmael, a young man who has to live in exile because of his political ideology. While in exile, he comes to know about the death of his deaf-mute father. The book is a moving account of Ishmael discovering his father through a notebook written by his illiterate father, in cuneiform.

I was quite fascinated by an incident that happens while Ishmael is secretly working for the leftist organisation. He is asked to help Jamileh, a lady revolutionary in hiding and he arranges for her stay in his parents’ house. As she lives there in hiding, she influences his sisters, who were till then not exposed to such ideology, in a big way. Till then their only aim in life was to get married and give birth to children. Their mother also had the dream of marrying her two daughters off to “two normal, decent men.’ She also dreamt of becoming a grandmother, of holding her grandchildren on her lap and telling them stories.

It is then that Jamileh comes and shatters all her dreams. Two ordinary men indeed come and ask for her daughters’ hands. Alas! the girls refuse to marry the ordinary men.

Ishmael’s mother weeps and asks them, “What do you want? What on earth are you waiting for? A Castro? A Che Guevara?”

Though I could not control my laughter when I read the line, it set me thinking of my childhood. As a teenager, Che Guevara (not Castro, of course) was my hero. He was the ultimate romantic, adventurous hero, not Kamal Haasan or Sunil Gavaskar. I simply loved everything about Che, his idealism, his adventurism and his rugged looks. Perhaps it had something to do with growing up in Kerala in the seventies.

That was why I could relate to the question Ishmael’s mother asked her daughters.

Last month, when I was in Kerala, I saw a 15 year old boy with the most famous photo of Che Guevara on his T shirt. It was just out of curiosity that I asked him, Do you know who this is?’ He thought for a while, made some hissing noises and said, some Che or something…Anyway, he is a cool dude!’

Che Guevara, the revolutionary, a cool dude? Suddenly I felt so ancient, like a dinosaur.