Guwahati: Former Cuban president Fidel Castro’s image is hardly seen without his trademark fatigues.
A group of students here decided to initate a metamorphosis. They made a portrait of the revolutionary leader garlanded with a gamosa, a cloth used in Assam as a mark of love or respect, and sent it to him on the occasion of his 90th birth anniversary.
The students who are members of College Students Welfare Committee, an NGO formed to work for students, participated at a programme organised by the Embassy of Cuba in New Delhi on Friday to commemorate Castro’s birth anniversary. They sent the portrait through the officials of the embassy.
“Most of the photographs of Castro that we find on the Internet are almost the same — Castro in olive green fatigues. We thought about presenting him in a different way. When Castro will get the portrait and see the gamosa he will be curious to know about Assam,” Abhinav Borbora, one of the students, told The Telegraph.
Besides Borbora the other two students are Pokhraj Bordoloi and Y. Priyam Singh.
“The painting was released during the programme. They requested me to say something. In my speech I said members of young generations like me are attracted to Castro not just for the political revolution he led, but for the social revolution created in Cuba. The free and efficient healthcare system of Cuba is an outcome of the social revolution,” said Borbora.
Castro governed the Republic of Cuba as Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976 and then as President from 1976 to 2008.
“After the event we discussed the prospect of reopening the Cuban cultural centre with Marileydis D. Morales, the in-charge ambassador of the embassy,” Borbora said.
“Cuba had a cultural centre in Delhi. It was closed after dissolution of the Soviet Union. The embassy officials said they would be happy to reopen the embassy and for that NGOs like us can help in many ways,” Borbora said.
The Cuban embassy awarded Borbora a certificate of appreciation for his contribution towards strengthening India-Cuba ties.
(Source: The Telegraph)