I was reading the Times of India, when my eyes fell on an interesting article which was shouting out to me: "Put me up on your blog for Christ's sake!". I had no other option but to oblige and I do so with no regrets whatsoever.
"Gahlor Ghati (Gaya): Over four decades ago, a frail landless farmer got hold of a chisel and a hammer and decided to change the face of this village nestled in the rocky hills of Gaya. Dashrath Manjhi tore open a 300-feet high hill to create a one-km passage.
Manjhi knew it would be easier to move a mountain than an apathetic government. He knew writing to the powers-that-be would only leave the hill tied in red tape. Instead, Manjhi, then in his early 20s, took up a chisel and hammered at the rocks for 22 years.
This feat, part of local folklore now, stemmed from Manjhi's love for his wife. For, when she slipped off the rocks while getting food for him as he worked in a field beyond the hill and broke her ankle, it became a burning passion to tame the formidable hills that virtually cut his village off from civilisation....
....He shifted his hut close to the hill so he could work all day and night, chipping away, little by little. "I did not even bother to eat," he says.
With most of the cultivable lands and shops across the hill, villagers had to cross it many times a day, braving dangers.
It was after 10 years that people began to notice a change in the shape of the hill. Instead of a defiant rockface, the hill seemed to have a depression in the middle. Climbing it became a little easier. "All those who had called me mad began to quietly watch me work. Some even chipped in," he recollects.
In 1982, twenty-two years after he had started out, Manjhi walked through a clear flat passage - about 16-feet wide - to the other side of the hill...."
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