You have ever heard story of sculpture Farhad and Shirin. Farhad was in love with Shirin who was already in love with Persian King Khusrow Parevez. The king tasked Farhad for carving staircase in a mountain to give Shirin’s hand in marriage. The lover word hard to complete the task but the king sent a fake message to him that Shirin was dead after which he jumped into a lake to commit the suicide. Knowing about the death of Farhad, his beloved also committed suicide by jumping into the same lake.
A similar but 100 percent true story occurred in Gaya town of Indian State Bihar. This is the story of Dasarath Manjhi, a man of incredible determination and courage who dug out mountain to construct a road over miles.
Manjhi with just a hammer and a chisel started breaking the mountain to connect the Atri and Wazirganj areas. He continued to break the mountain alone for 22 years. When Manjhi completed his work, he had built a 15-kilometer road from Atri to Wazirganj. Prior to this, people had to travel 55 kilometers around the mountain to reach the destination.
Why did Manjhi did this strange thing and spend 22 years of his life in digging a mountain? It is an emotional story. It was in 1959 that Manjhi’s wife Falguni fell ill, but the nearest doctor’s facility was 70 kilometers away and the route passed through difficult mountains. Manjhi’s wife passed away before she could reach the doctor, but at that moment, he vowed to make the lives of the people of his village easier by building a road through which they could reach an area with medical facilities in just a few minutes. He started breaking the rocky mountain between Atri and Wazirganj with a hammer and chisel and eventually made a 30-foot-wide road straight through the mountains to Wazirganj.
When Manjhi started his work, people called him crazy, but he continued in this madness for 22 years and finally succeeded in carving a path through the mountain. He completed this amazing work between 1960 and 1982.
Manjhi left this world on August 17, 2007, at the age of 73, and was buried with state honors. Director Ketan Mehta also made the film “Manjhi” on the life of this real hero, in which Nawazuddin and Radhika Apte played the leading roles.
