Affirmation #32
You Can Be Serious
Grim-ness is not persistence, and strain is not discipline
Dashrath Manjhi was 25 years old when the mountain killed his wife. His beloved, Falguni, was badly injured in a fall while traversing the mountain one day to bring Manjhi water as he labored.
She might have survived with proper medical care, but the mountain denied her that, too: Its immutable geography cleaved their hometown of Gehlaur from nearby towns. To reach Gehlaur, doctors had to travel a seventy kilometer path that wound around the mountain. Falguni died before they arrived.
The sources I’ve read disagree on the circumstances surrounding Falguni’s death. There are varying accounts regarding how she was injured, and how badly. Some accounts claim she was pregnant at the time of her death (and that her child survived). Is hard to pin down which versions of the story are correct, or complete.
Everybody agrees on what happened next, though, and for good reason; it’s so baffling that it feels like fiction.
Grieving the death of his wife, Dashrath Manjhi settled on a new purpose for his life: in tribute to Falguni, he would defeat the mountain. He grabbed a hammer and a chisel and decided to rip a path through the mountain so that it could never delay medical…
