Love Charm

“‘‘Ek shahenshah ne banakar haseen Taj Mahal / Udaya hai hum garibon ka mazak’’, Sahir Ludhianvi lamented many years ago. I had always suspicions (and a bit of smug condescendence, to be honest) about an emperor’s post mortem ‘love’ for his wife who died creating progenies for him year after year, immortalized in marble bought with funds raised from poor taxpayer’s built by craftsmen whose names have been forgotten as soon as their work got done. However, our national euphoria over the Taj Mahal with frequent mentions in love poems, love notes, love songs and very recently, love sms’s refused to let me give up on it altogether. Only last night, a rather inspiring story finally cured me of India’s national ‘love’ monument completely.

This is about a man who lived with his wife in a little village over the hills in Jharkhand. One day his wife fell very ill and the nearest doctor or hospital miles away over the hill. It would take him a few days to cross the hill and so, though he tried, he lost his wife due to delay in medical care. He was sad at her leaving him, a wife he loved and cared for, so he decided to do something to remember her by. He picked up his hammer and axe and went to the base of the hill that separated his village from the local medical centre and started to carve out what seemed like the beginnings of a crude pathway. He was an old man but everyday he woke up religiously and went to the hill and worked with his simple tools to make this path. Soon people got to know and they first enquired about the truth of the story and when they found out about it they laughed at him. At his stubbornness, and his simplicity, at what he probably said was love for his wife. He said he did not want another man to lose his wife due to lack of medical attention and they laughed even louder at his dream project. Build a road through this hill? Didn’t he know what machines it required to do that/ how much money, government people, permissions, contractors, labourers? Soon this became the joke of the village but the man continued unflinchingly with his hammer and axe, everyday, picking his way through the woods, reach the hill and bludgeon away at the rocks.

That started 22 years ago. Today he has finished. There is a road now, 6 ft wide, 300 feet long through that hill connecting more than 60 villages to the medical centre on the other side of the hill.

Shahjehan – go take a break – I have found what I will swear by if I ever swear my love to someone.