THE MAN WHO TAMED THE MOUNTAIN- A LESSON IN LOVE AND PERSEVERENCE

It is the story of a young villager who loved his still younger wife so much that he couldn’t stand the sight of her walking miles and miles every day to fetch water for the family from the river beyond the mountain. There was nothing he could do though. Women in all households in this desolate village were doing this day in, day out, all the year round. Women were supposed to fetch and toil. More than the toil , it was the sight of his young wife having to walk through the mountain, squeezing through the narrow crevice , with the sharp rocky edges scratching her body every time she passed through, that made him all the more sad. But the ultimate was when she came back one day, bruised all over with tear-filled eyes, to tell him that she had slipped and fallen while passing the crevice, broken all her earthen pots, and hurt herself more in the soul than on the body. He knew he had to do something. He called on his fellow men of the village and told them about the need to widen the crevice and build a proper road for the ladies to fetch water. Even the thought itself was preposterous to the elders and a matter of ridicule and joke for the others. How could he be so hen-pecked as to want to do such an impossible, unnecessary thing to help his wife? After all, women were meant to fetch and carry, were they not?

But the man couldn’t be stopped. His wife continued the routine of fetching water, but he decided to start building the road. With a spade and chisel, he set about the work of breaking down the sharp edges of the crevice and laying the road. He toiled in the day in his land and in the afternoons and evenings in the mountain. His wife continued fetching water, even when she was pregnant with their two kids. The youngster continued his toil. Years rolled by. The autistic first child or the failing health of his young wife did not change their routine. His routine continued, even after his young wife succumbed to her illness and left him with his two young children. His routine continued for years, even after his second child was married and bore two children of her own. He continued to toil with his road even when his son-in-law died of illness and his daughter with her two kids came back home. The road had become his goal, his dream, and his religion. Finally, after twenty long years, the road became a reality and the mountain finally gave in. The women folk of the village continued to fetch water but were much more comfortable, taking the road he had built.

Finally some one told him about the government in the far away city that could pave the road and get it connected to the main road to the valley, so that he and his fellow villagers could access the far away city and the facilities there, much more easily. He walked all the way to the city to request the state’s Chief Minister to do the needful. The CM promised to do the needful and knowing of his toil for twenty long years, allotted him a plot of land in his village.

But destiny continued to be cruel to the man. Even before he could even see the plot that would one day be his, he was afflicted by the same disease that had taken his wife earlier. He was told it was a form of cancer. He never left the hospital bed, never had a chance to. He died on the bed. Before his death he requested the doctor to see if the land allotted to him could still be got and a hospital built there on. He passed away, content with the thought of his immediate rendezvous with his dead wife, and the satisfaction of having culminated his near-ending love for her by completing the road, all by himself.

You might think this is the story line for a tear-jerker movie. I won’t blame you. This can happen only in fiction. But I do not know if you would believe me, if I say this is no fiction. I do not know if the land was finally allotted. I do not know if the hospital was built. I do not know what happened to his children and grand children. But I know the whole village no longer ridicules him for the great work he had done all by himself.
This truer-than-life story is that of Dashrath Manjhi and his wife Faguni Devi of Gehlaur Village in Gaya, Bihar He started the road laying in 1960 and completed the three kilometer all by himself in 1982. He passed away last year.

This story of the wonderful chemistry of love between a man and his wife, the devotion of a man to a project he had undertaken even after he lost the reason detaire, the courage of man to give to the society his contribution without expecting anything in return except satisfaction, was revealed in her fortnightly column, “The Other Side” by Ms Mrinal Pande, in the MINT on 28th Aug 07. I was moved by it. I was shamed by it for I have nothing similar to Manjhi’s sacrifice to show in my life I have traversed, despite God having endowed me with much better circumstances than Manjhi. Can we spread this story of love and selfless sacrifice? Can we do something at least now to match the deed of Manjhi?