Man who broke a mountain for love

They say that given enough time a steadily dripping drop of water can wear down a giant rock They also say that true love can move mountains The story of a humble Indian called Dashrath Manjhi reminded me of both these aphorismsIrsquod heard of Shah Jahan and how he built the Taj Mahal for his beloved wife Mumtaz Begum Irsquove heard of the socalled Taj Mahal of the Northmdashthe Ashton Memorial in Lancaster England The 150foot structure not marble but Portland stone with a copper dome was the loving memorial of local millionaire Lord Ashton to his second wife Jessie who died in 1904In an age where marriage is going out of style and divorces are seen as inevitable we still feel a twinge when we read about the things people do in the name of love But Dashrathrsquos monument to his wife teaches us that itrsquos not only millionaires and kings who can immortalise their loved onesSome people in Biharrsquos Gehlor village will tell you that Dashrath used to be a miner while others may remember him as an agricultural labourer He was both in the course of his 73 years of life but they neither made him rich nor famousWhere he was born it mattered that he belonged to the lowest of castes As a young lad at the bottom of the social barrel he ran away from home looking for opportunity but the best he found were hundreds of feet below the earth in the blazing coal mines of Dhanbad He returned to Gehlor to become a farm handSomewhere around this time he married Falguni It is not known whether it was love or arrangement From pictures Irsquove seen of Dashrath Irsquod guess that he was a man of few words He looks taciturn not the kind whorsquod produce poetry or declarations of undying love His hands and heels would have been callused from workGehlor village sits on a plain but to its south rises a steep quartzite ridge reckoned to be over a billion years old and today counted as part of the Rajgir Hills On the other side of the hill lay the town of Wazirganj to get there you had to go over or around the mountainOne day in 1959 Dashrathrsquos wife Falguni carrying lunch for him fell off that mountain and was severely injured The nearest town with a doctor was 90 kms away on the other side of the mountain and no transport was available Falguni died before she could receive medical helpWe can only imagine Dashrathrsquos grief because he would have borne this wound like every other wound life had inflicted on him with stoic silence I donrsquot think he would have shed tears or beaten his chest with bereavementFrom great grief comes great inspiration as it did for Shah Jahan Dashrath decided that in memory of his beloved Falguni he would cut a road through the mountains so that no one else would ever fall and die again because they could not reach a hospital in timeHowever unlike Shah Jahan or Lord Ashton Dashrath was penniless and unemployedmdashhe couldnrsquot hire bulldozers and earthmovers or an army of workers to cleave the mountain in two Dashrath decided to build the road by himself with the only tools he ownedThose tools happened to be a hammer and a chiselThe whole village laughed at this foolish man and his harebrained plan Only an idiot would think anyone could cut a road through a mountain with two hand toolsldquoThey called me a lunatic when I started hammering the hillrdquo Dashrath said later But that only made him more doggedThe laughter of the villagers died down in a few years when they saw his grim resolve Some began to call him the lsquoMountain Manrsquo Some of the villagers who had taunted him began to support him by bringing him food or buying him toolsDashrath chipped away at the mountain for 22 years When he was done he had carved a pathmdash110 metres long 77 metres deep in places and 91 metres widemdashthrough a ridge of rocks The villagers werenrsquot ridiculing him any more He had shown them that one determined man can move a mountain even with just a hammer and a chiselIn 2007 Manjhi was diagnosed with gallbladder cancer He died on 17 August 2007 at the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences in New Delhi and was given a state funeral by the government of Bihar A proper road now connects Gehlor with Wazirganj and Atri in Gaya districtThe India Post department released a commemorative stamp featuring Dashrath Manjhi in December 2016 Now thatrsquos more than Shah Jahan ever got when he made the Taj MahalHere viewed from there C Y Gopinath in Bangkok throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai the city that raised him You can reach him at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper