Four years of searching, only to find Che Guevara standing orphaned; painful discovery for sculptor PV Rajeevan

KANNUR: For four years, sculptor P.V. Rajeevan went from one party office to another, knocking on doors and asking where the Che Guevara statue he had made was. He approached everyone from the CPM branch secretary to the party’s state secretary. He met leaders, filed complaints and kept searching for the six-foot sculpture that had disappeared after being displayed during the party’s 23rd congress in Kannur in April 2022.

Then, finally, he found it.

The sculpture was standing more than 50 kilometres from Payyannur, at Adoorpalam in Kattachira, on a roadside stretch of land where the party has installed statues, close to a sickle-and-hammer monument.

However, the discovery brought little joy. His creation was standing there, abandoned. “I was moved to tears when I saw my creation lying there abandoned,” said Rajeevan, 43, who lives near the Payyannur temple.

Rajeevan spent three years, from 2013 to 2016, working day and night to create the sculpture. His admiration for Che Guevara was the driving force behind the work, and his mother, P.V. Janaki, helped him create the figure.

The sculpture depicts Che Guevara standing ready for action, with a clenched fist and a gun and camera slung over his shoulders. He wears a star-emblazoned cap, an overcoat and a belt, with a revolver in his hand, a camera around his neck and a rifle hanging behind him.

In April 2022, the sculpture was taken to Kannur to help decorate the city for the CPM’s 23rd party congress. It was installed near the old bus stand in Kannur. But once the conference ended, Rajeevan could no longer find it.

He began trying to trace it. He met the then district secretary M.V. Jayarajan as well as district and state-level DYFI leaders. He also approached the Payyannur MLA and complained to the Kannur Town police.

The search, however, took a toll on him.

During the course of his efforts, Rajeevan suffered a stroke that left one side of his body paralysed. He lost movement in his right hand.

Yet he did not give up sculpting.

He now continues his work using his left hand.

Unmarried, Rajeevan remains devoted to his craft. And after finally locating the Che Guevara sculpture he had spent years searching for, he is left with the sight of a work that once represented his admiration standing far from where he expected to find it.

For Rajeevan, however, Che Guevara’s words remain a source of strength.

“They may kill me, but they cannot defeat me,” he said.