Dashrath Manjhi Biography
(Mountain Man)
Born: 1934
Born In: Gehlaur
Dashrath Manjhi was a poor Indian laborer who earned the epithet, ‘Mountain Man’ for sculpting a track via a hillock with just a mallet and chisel. His carving out a trail through the ‘Gehlaur’ mound which took him 22 long years is a burning example of the extraordinary feat(s) an ordinary man is capable of achieving when the odds are stacked against him. Manjhi used to be a simple villager earning his livelihood by cutting trees in the jungle and selling the wood in the market. Dire poverty compelled him to flee his home and take up a job as a miner in one of the coalmines of Dhanbad, a city in Jharkhand known as the ‘Coal Capital of India’. After toiling in the coalmines for several years, he came to his native village and set up a home with his wife Falguni Devi. Falguni had to climb up and down the hillock everyday to carry lunch for her husband who’d be engaged either in cutting trees or working in the fields. While carrying lunch for Dashrath one day, a pregnant Falguni suffered a fall, injuring herself fatally, and subsequently dying. Extremely grief-stricken by the unfortunate event, Manjhi made up his mind to cut through the knoll to create a passageway so that nobody in future suffered the same fate his wife did.