The man who broke a mountain,
A faceless, nameless, landless ordinary farmer he was,
And to bring a smile on his wife’s face was his only noble
cause,
To earn his daily bread, all day, he toiled on his field,
From morn to dusk and then again, trying to increase his
yield.
A shared meal with his wife, was the highlight of his day,
But a treacherous route across the mountain, shortened the
length of her stay,
Yet he enjoyed every day as it came, letting his goats graze
by the mountain side,
Every evening he enjoyed the view of the valleys far and
wide,
Till one day his wife slipped on her way to for lunch and
fell
Hearing this news, his face aged, as if sentenced to serve an
eternity in hell,
his simple world came crashing down upon him,
his wife’s fate looked grim,
In a desolate remote village, the hospital was 36 miles
away,
And the towering mighty mountain stood tall, blocking the
way,
Along the winding road he went, tears marking his path,
In his agony he screamed, the mountain bearing the brunt of
his wrath.
His wife, his beautiful wife, had fought really hard,
and when later she passed away, it did leave him scarred,
A poor, uneducated person, he knew there was no government
for him,
Only the rich had highways made, the poor had only hope but
even that had started to dim,
People they had for years tried to have a road through the
mountain built,
But they were never able to have,the odds in their favor
tilt,
That night he cried and cried till tears could no more flow,
He promised to himself, no one else would have to before the
mountain bow,
There was fierce fire burning on those eyes,
For all things material he only had a look of despise,
He sold his goats only for a chisel, hammer and rope,
Giving up on his aspiration of youth, he began his walk up
the mountain slope,
He sold his hut and moved base, right at the mountain’s
foot,
Armed with a burning passion, all future hopes and dreams
caput.
Aloof, not bothering to join in the many celebrations at the
village feast,
The village folk in the beginning sympathetic, now his
sanity began to doubt,
But the young man had decided to work tirelessly on this
route,
So the days, weeks months turned to years,
This man had overcome all his fears,
He worked and chiseled and hammered away,
Soon the children of the village next to him began to stay,
The cheered him on every now and then, bringing a smile on
his face,
Even the villagers in their dreary life lost track of his “different”
ways.
Soon the small dent in the mountain, became a hole and then
a path,
22 years had gone by,and only this one man hath,
Taken on everything on his way, the mountain, the sniggers
and sneers,
Being called a madman, treated as an outcast and finally
even accepting the children’s cheers,
Soon it dawned on the villagers what this one crazy man had
done,
The 35 mile treacherous pathway was now less than one,
The path was 16 feet wide,
with people from 60 villages using the road for a motor or
bicycle ride
No longer were they isolated, begging the government for
their right,
And with this “one man monument” in sight,
One can see the power of will, the power of one,
And what all is achievable and can be done,
For no, this man did not build a TajMahal in his wife’s
memory,
It is still for all a wonder of a world,
A world where we cry for the smallest of things
This path in the middle of a monument is as good as the
Sphinx,
Next time one sits down on a corner feeling helpless and all
alone,
Think of this one man who took on the world and won - all by
chiseling away at stone,
The man who broke a mountain,
What an enormous beast to tame,
Overcoming insurmountable odds he has achieved immortal fame
- Digvijay Pande
Based on the true story of Dashrath Manjhi
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