AEONS AGO THERE WERE seven battle hardened Samurai, who soldiered on with the gift of stratagem and military skills. They had carved a niche for themselves in both attacking and defence techniques.
Here are seven ordinary Indian mortals who would have remained in the wheel of anonymity but for their quintessential ability and the agility of their minds.
Life is never a cake walk. It is full of peaks and valleys. In a crowd of teeming millions, there is nothing sensational about them. They would probably remain in anonymity as they are neither gifted with exceptional looks; but these people are blessed with robust minds and have the uncanny ability to break false ceilings and upend the pyramid.
They are inspirational figures, who have provided an aperture of hope in big ways and small. It is a tribute to determination and grit that they are able to transform challenges into opportunities.
Some of the world’s greatest leaders experienced epic failure at some point in time in life; however such events did not act as a deterrent. While it is natural for the legion of their fans to carouse in their success, it is all too easy for humans overlook the path they had to negotiate for these aerobicized humans to become role models. A path that is full of thorns and failures provides the necessary ballast for such individuals to become achievers.
Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s paradigmatic poem, ‘Where the Mind is Without Fear’ will forever rouse and stimulate millions across the globe as this poem touches the core of one’s heart and energises the human mind.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
- Amitabh Bachchan
ONE OF THE GREATEST trouper’s of Indian cinema is Amitabh Bachchan. An iconic actor, whose films have left an indelible impression on the minds of legions of his followers, hundreds of his fans wait with bated breath every day to have a glimpse of their idol outside Jalsa his house in Mumbai.
The ability to metamorphose his personality is a remarkable quality of this stellar actor. The superstar’s journey is nothing short of a roller coaster ride; from being unable to get into All India Radio to failed actor and then becoming a sensational performer before hitting the nadir in the late 1990s and finally reinventing himself as TV host in the fabled Kaun Banega Crorepati. It is a tribute to the resilience of his ability and mind. The story goes that in sheer desperation he walked upto Yash Chopra and requested for a role and thus made a stunning comeback in films, beginning with Mohabbatein.
Several of his contemporaries have faded away, but Amitabh Bachchan keeps simulating and attempts derivation in a facile manner. This is the key to his astounding success. From the blockbuster Zanjeer in 1973 to Wazir a few years back, Amitabh has enacted a variety of roles. The first angry young man of Indian cinema, Big B has essayed a plethora of roles which have won him several accolades. He has been nominated on 41 occasions for the best actor category for Filmfare awards and has had the distinction of bagging 4 National Awards for stellar performances.
The trouper has been feted with a Padma Sri in 1984, a Padma Bhushan in 2001 and a Padma Vibhushan in 2015. The French government has decorated the noted actor with the Knight of Legion distinction.
He was named Inquilab by his parents, the noted poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan and Teji Bachchan. But upon the intervention of fellow poet Sumitra Nandan Pant, the name was changed to Amitabh. He was schooled in the estimable Sherwood School and graduated from Kirori Mal College, Delhi University. But his heart lay in the tinsel world. He began his career in Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome in the year 1969, where he was to render a voice over.
His maiden foray into Hindi films was in Khwaja Ahmed Abbas’s movie Saath Hindustani. The film won critical acclaim but did not catapult this talented actor to fame. However, he caught the attention of the film fraternity and cine goers in the role of a cynical doctor in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anand. While Rajesh Khanna the superstar of Indian cinema walked away with the honours, the performance of Amitabh Bachchan was appreciated and keenly observed by writer duo Salim and Javed.
After a series of flops, 12 to be exact, Zanjeer catapulted him to dizzying fame. This was followed by a string of hits such as Sholay, Chupke Chupke, and Silsila among others. In the five decades that he has been the suzerain of the film industry, Amitabh Bachchan has acted in more than 190 movies.
The entire nation prayed for his health when he was hit in his abdomen while the movie Coolie was being canned. The artiste was in a traumatic health condition and everyone associated with him was in a tizzy. The Prime Minister of India at that time, Mrs Indira Gandhi too called on this famous son. Such was the phenomenal popularity of this individual.
Following the assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi, Bachchan contested Lok Sabha polls at the request of Rajiv Gandhi, his friend, and won from his home city of Allahabad. However he was soon mired in controversy and therefore decided to say a permanent adieu to politics.
Amitabh Bachchan is one of the most influential personalities of Indian cinema but has had his share of misadventures including political controversy and a rumoured affair with actress Rekha.
However the charismatic artiste will always be remembered for his ability to reinvent himself whenever the chips were down.
This distinguishes him from his contemporaries and fellow artistes.
- Gangadhara Tilak Katnam
“ONE DAY, I WAS driving my car when suddenly it fell into a pothole and splashed the muddy water filled in it on to a few street kids nearby.”
Come monsoon and this is an everyday experience for most of us. Not once do we pause to think if we might help to improve the situation.
“I felt so ashamed. I spent Rs. 5,000 to buy the necessary material and filled that pothole,” recalls Gangadhara.
He is 67 years of age and worked with South Central Railway (SCR) as a Senior Section Engineer. But he is not an ordinary person though he may be faceless in the landscape of razzmatazz world dotted with Tollywood stars in Hyderabad.
The man is filled with immense passion and almost messianic zeal to fill potholes of the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. To date ha has filled 1,125 potholes, spending around Rs 500/- per day. This gentleman buys gravel on his own and goes about his chore without any financial support. Perhaps ashamed or inspired by him the software engineers of the Twin Cities have joined hands with this former railway employee in the shramdan.
The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) in the year 2012 decided to provide BT Mix material to Gangadhara in this noble cause.
It is a singular tribute to the mind and might of this person that he has become a game changer in filling up potholes and crevices in the city once ruled by Nizams.
Were the parents of this former railway employee clairvoyant that they named their son after Bal Gangadhar Tilak?
- Nandlal Master
“I HAVE SEEN YOUNG kids working and sacrificing their studies. Young girls were getting married at such an early age; they didn’t come to school at all. So I thought of starting a school for such kids,” recalls Nandlal.
Hailing from the weaver community, Nandlal Master has channelized the energies of Rajatalab, a bijou town adjacent to the ancient city of Varanasi. Through an NGO, Lok Samiti established in mid nineties, is focussing on spreading awareness, education, eradication of child marriage and child labour.
In a caste ridden society, the task is indeed challenging. But a man blessed with a brawny and robust mind can set a template. Till date he has been able to perform more than 1000 low budget weddings. And significantly he has focussed on inter caste marriages. This has made him a pariah of sorts from members of rich, powerful, Hindus and Muslims alike. But Nandlal’s efforts are slowly but surely bearing fruit.
This local weaver from Rajatalab has started a learning centre to educate children from villages nearby, which has fired the imagination of stripling youth. His initiative now has over 500 students from less privileged homes.
Dowry is a big anathema and financial drain on the poor in particular. The weaver through his resoluteness has been able to break false glass ceilings. He has been chastised, criticised and castigated but, that has not prevented him from laying down his peaceful arsenal.
“It is so sad to see that farmers sell their lands and houses to arrange funds for their daughter’s wedding. Marriage should be an occasion of bringing two people together and not spending so much money,” he says.
He is no prophet, no Guru but just an ordinary man, a stock individual who at the subterranean level in his own indomitable manner has served society.
- Daripalli Ramaiah
“OF ALL THE SPECIES THAT consider the Earth as their home, the most exalted is the human being. He supposedly has intellect, can think, can do and can get things done. Nature has bestowed her choicest blessings on this form of life. Therefore, we have a duty towards nature. Protect the nature; protect everything created by God, for the posterity,” says Daripalli Ramaiah.
He is fabled as the “man who planted more than 10 million trees”. Daripalli Ramaiah was born in Reddypally, Khammam district of Telengana when India was still incarcerated under the British regime, in the year 1937.
Today at 81, he is still sprightly and carries several seeds in his pockets, traversing on a cycle which perhaps keeps him fit. He keeps planting the seeds in the hope that the entire area would become verdant in his lifetime.
His mind is motivated to plant trees with no material benefit in sight. Apart from planting several trees with a missionary zeal he parts with plants without charging any money in return.
It is reliably learnt that to fulfil his passion he once requested the local MLA to plant a tree. It so happened that the same individual donated him Rs.5,000 to perform his son’s marriage. Ramaiah instead deployed the princely amount for the tree plantation function. Such is the commitment and concern of this legendary person towards making the planet green.
I wonder why TV channels who devote an entire day’s time championing the laudable cause to make our planet green, do not focus their attention even for a few seconds on these unsung heroes of India who have nothing at stake but our posterity.
They have seen parched lands screaming and languishing for the monsoons. Such individuals are a witness to famine, poverty and degradation of the soil and the agrarian crisis and do not merely pay lip service or platitudes for bytes.
He was feted with Padma Sri in the year 2017, for his invaluable contribution to extending the tree cover. In local parlance the elderly and respected one is known as ‘Chetla Ramaiah’ or ‘Trees Ramaiah.’ In his messianic drive to provide green cover, he is estimated to have planted more than 10 million saplings in and around Khammam district with a singular thrust on trees which provide shade, fruit-bearing plants, and bio-diesel plants with assured benefit to the future generations of the denizens of Khamam district of Telengana.
As a tireless campaigner of social forestry spanning five decades, Ramaiah is unable to recollect as to who pulled the trigger in his mind to launch this crusade. Somewhere in the alcoves of his mind is a hazy memory that as a child he was a witness to his mother saving some seeds of vegetable plants which could be fruitfully utilised during the subsequent sowing season.
On occasion Ramaiah is accompanied by his wife and some school children from local schools. It is a matter of travesty that he could never receive any formal education. However, in his pursuit of excellence he has read a Brobdingnagian number of books on trees and various process of planting trees. Many environmentalists consider him to be a walking encyclopaedia on the local trees.
The government of Andhra Pradesh provided Ramaiah a special recognition for his relentless drive and contribution towards the country. Upon the formation of the state of Telangana, he continued to receive support from the present Chief Minister, K.Chandrashekar Rao’s several flagship programmes such as Telangana Ku Haritha Hāram (Green Garland). The objective of Haritha Hāram scheme is to increase the green cover from the present 24% to 33% of the total geographical area of the state. This is no mean achievement and reflects the muscular mind of Ramaiah and his deep insight to transform the parched lands of Telangana.
- Omkar Nath Sharma
INDIA WAS STILL seven years shy of attaining independence; the year was 1940. Omkarnath Sharma or Medicine Baba as he came to be known arrived on planet earth. Certain metaphysical schools of thought believe that souls decide at a certain point in time to choose their parents, place of birth and mission on Earth. The estimable author, Louise L Hay concurs with this viewpoint. She emphatically states that “each one of us decide to incarnate upon this planet at a particular point in time and space and advance upon our spiritual, evolutionary pathway.”
The eighty year old retired blood bank technician from Kailash Hospital in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, voluntarily collects unused medicines from people, which he then distributes to the needy without charging anything.
People collect stamps, paintings or coins, but this geriatric individual collects medicines. There was perhaps a double whammy which fuelled the mind of this gentleman. One, he was crippled at the tender age of twelve and second he was witness to the horrific sight when two migrant labourers lost their precious lives and scores injured when the scaffolding of a bridge under construction by the Delhi Metro collapsed in the year 2008, in East Delhi. The local hospital merely administered first aid to the labourers and did precious little.
Rankled and overwrought by what he saw, he made a solemn resolution to himself that never would lives of patients be treated in such an uncaring and stony-hearted manner.
Though physically incapacitated so young in a car accident, Omkar Nath Sharma walks five or six kilometres every day. In a methodical and meticulous manner at the end of every collection, the Medicine Monk diligently catalogues everything in his binder: the name of the drug, the manufacturer, where he collected it and the expiry date. The elderly one makes no killing from these priceless collections; nothing but succour to those suffering from various pestilences.
Every morning Omkar Nath Sharma embarks upon this odyssey and gathers medicines to help the infirm. Nothing deters him from his mission. The Sharmas have a mentally handicapped forty –five year old son. But these tragedies and tribulations in life have only strengthened the steely resolve of the eighty year old in his mission.
A nameless face, whom no one would recognise or bother to have a second glance has been feted by the Government of Delhi with the Gaurav Award and soon in 2017, the Maharashtra government decorated him with the Shoorveer Award.
The man, his madness and method are obscured from reality. In fact it looks so surrealistic that it is hard to believe that such a Gandhian still exists.
32 Chewang Norphel
HAILING FROM A MIDDLE-class family of Leh, Norphel studied at the Amar Singh College in Srinagar. He completed a diploma course in civil engineering from Lucknow in the year 1960. Sometime in June 1960, he joined the rural development department of Jammu and Kashmir in Ladakh as a civil engineer.
As a child and a youngster it dawned on him that there was acute shortage of water faced by the inhabitants in the arid and cold climes of Leh and Ladakh.
He was determined to provide succour to the local populace and to help them grapple with the scarcity of the most precious commodity – that is water. He figuratively became Bhagirath to bring the Ganges to the people of dry region and soon earned the sobriquet, “Ice Man.”
The year was 1996 and Norphel joined the Leh Nutrition Project, a non-governmental organisation, as a project manager for watershed development.
The keen eye of Norphel discovered a small stream which had frozen solid under the shade of a group of poplar trees, while it flowed with gay abandon elsewhere in his yard.
He was perspicacious enough to analyse the reason for this strange natural phenomenon: the flowing water was moving too rapidly to freeze, while the sluggish trickle of water beneath the trees was slow enough to freeze.
The mind of the civil engineer worked overtime and he created numerous artificial glaciers by diverting river water into a valley, by slowing the stream while constructing checks. The artificial glaciers augmented the ground-water recharge, rejuvenating the springs and consequently providing water for irrigation. He built them at lower elevations, so that they melt earlier, thereby expanding the growing season.
By 2012, Norphel had successfully constructed 12 artificial glaciers. Norphel’s largest glacier is at the Phuktsey village. This is 1,000 ft long, 150 ft wide and 4 ft in depth. It has the potential to supply water for an entire village of 700 people at a cost of Rs 90,000.
Documentary film-maker Aarti Shrivastava also directed a short film on his life titled White Knight, which was screened at film festivals in India and abroad.
This “Ice Man of India” in his missionary zeal has created 10 glaciers in Ladakh to help deal with water scarcity in the region.
-Taken from my third book, ‘The Infinite Mind’, co-authored with Ankush Garg. The book will be available at the Delhi Book Fair (5th – 13th January, 2019) and at the Chennai Book Fair (4th – 20th January, 2019).
ravivalluri 
thanks
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