Mountain Man

You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it- Robin Williams 

Released in August 2015, Manjhi tells the incredible story of Dashrath Manhji, a labourer who used just a hammer and a chisel to forge a path through a hillock that blocked access from his village to the nearest town. Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays the titular role and he takes to the task with the same gusto with which Manjhi took to the mountain. 

The inherent appeal of Mountain Man, like that other remarkable ‘maverick’, Menstrual Man, lies in the fact that he is an everyman; someone who is extraordinary precisely because he doesn’t regard what he’s doing as extraordinary. For Manjhi, breaking down the mountain he held solely responsible for a personal tragedy (no spoilers!) was just a normal thing to do, and he seems genuinely baffled when people don’t agree with him. 

He is portrayed as somewhat of an oddball even before he takes on this ‘little’ project, but is soon suspected of having even more serious mental issues, long before the sheer physical and mental strain takes him to the very edge of sanity. Still Manjhi perseveres for 22 years and carves a path 365 feet long, eventually reducing a 55 km journey to just 15 km. 

For me, the story has shades of Shawshank Redemption (in terms of the near-impossibility of the task at hand), and also of Forrest Gump- particularly the one sequence in which he sets off on foot from his village to the national capital, Delhi, cultivating both impressive facial hair and a small crew of followers along the way. 

Mostly, though, it seems like a metaphor for the lives of millions of common men and women of our great land. Every day, they pick up whatever tools they have to hand, and go up against a system that’s at best indifferent, and at worst, oppressive. The odds must seem insurmountable, but there they are, standing in the shadow of the mountain, hammering away in the hope that one day, just maybe, a glimmer of light will shine through. 

Here’s to the renegades.