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MAJHI THE MOUNTAIN MAN

By Ketan MEHTA

NATIONAL FILM DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION / NFDC INDIA (LTD) - as PROD

Drama - Completed 2013

- Year of production
- 2013
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- INDIA
- Languages
- Other
- Director(s)
- Ketan MEHTA
- Writer(s)
- Ketan MEHTA, Mahender JHAKKAR
- Synopsis
- Dashrath Manjhi is famously known in India as “the Man who broke a mountain for love”. The film “Majhi - the Mountain man” is a true story about that legendry man- a story, so true that it is “stranger than fiction”.
  Dashrath Manjhi was a poorest of the poor man from the lowest of the low castes, living in a tiny village in the poor state of Bihar.
  A great big mountain separated this village from the rest of the world.
  Manjhi, loved his wife beyond belief.
  One day, as his pregnant wife carried his mid day meal across the mountain to him, she fell down from the mountain and died. Shocked and angry, Majhi swore to break the mountain and make a path so that no one else would ever suffer her fate.
  With just a hammer and a chisel he started what was perceived as an impossible task. The villagers ridiculed him, called him mad.
  He dug away at the mountain, breaking the boulders with his hammer and chisel, through scorching summers, stormy monsoons and chilling winters, day in and day out, year after year, like a man possessed. Conquering fear and fatigue, hunger and loneliness, without any desire for a reward or recognition he continued on his mission in memory of his love.
  After years of toil, gradually, the villagers started seeing the difference in the topography, their derision, turned to admiration and after 22 years of back breaking labour, Dashrath finally carved out a mile long, 16 feet wide pathway through the 300 foot high mountain, reducing the distance to Wazirjang from 75 kilometers to just 4 kilometers.
  He became ‘Dashrath Baba’… the man who broke the mountain
  Simultaneously woven along with the story of Dashrath Manjhi, Mountain man is the story of the changing face of post independence India. The euphoria of independence, the stagnation and corruption of the socialist era, the extremist movement of Naxalism, the populist policies of Indira Gandhi and through all these changes the consistent neglect of rural India.
  But above all Majhi the Mountain man is a saga about the triump of the human will.