Odisha man carrying wife's body is the purest of all pilgrimages

Rarely have I seen a more compelling, soul-stirring image of heroism than that of a desperate and destitute man by the name of Dana Majhi, carrying on his shoulders the body of his deceased, beloved wife. Setting out on a journey of some 10km! Ready to walk it, all the way; or till he dropped down dead.

The hairs on my head stand up in awe and wonder.

I scream.

I weep.

I leap.

My eyes have beheld the ultimate in heroic nobility.

I looked up to see if the sky was blushing.

I looked around to see if the trees were shedding their foliage in adoration.

Of late we have been served a lavish dish of the gau rakshak brand of heroism. That of brutalising the poor and the defenceless, encouraged by assured immunity from unpleasant consequences.

Here is heroism of a different order.

I felt grateful to the media for bringing the images home. I would not miss them for heaven itself.

A bereaved husband. Don't you see him walking along the road? (Made especially smooth for him to walk.) But why, think you, does he look like a moving asymmetric cross? What is the horizontal piece that completes the cross he is?

A wife. Even in death. Who killed her? You? Me? God?

I had thought we were living in the 21st century: of mobiles and automobiles, of 4Gs and sirjis, of Mangalyaans and satellites, of Twitters and twitteratis, of Sukhois and Rafales.

Dana Majhi: the citizen of an emerging economic superpower. Bravo!

Where had all the bullock carts gone? Why were none in sight?

I try to put myself in Majhi's shoes. (Majhi has shoes, stupid. Shining India will someday fit Majhi's with clogs). Would I, in his place, even think of what he has done? Ten steps? Ten miles? Forget about it.

Here is cause at last to celebrate. Very few women in the history of our species (and that includes our country too) would have commanded heroic loyalty of this order and devotion of this magnitude from their husbands as this one has.

Typically, we don't even know her name. Well, it is almost an insult to slap a name on her. To name is to define. To define is to limit. It is a sacrilege to limit her: this nameless, faceless woman. She is not just Dana Majhi's wife. She is his life.

No, much more.

She is a woman.

Her dead body is too precious to be left behind. (You don't leave a woman behind, do you?) She deserves to be celebrated even in death. That 10km walk is the procession of processions: the desperate radiance of a man's defiant adoration of a woman, who her man will not let die as wife.

This is the purest of all pilgrimages, in which the pilgrim does not go to see a shrine, but carries his shrine, throwing defiance at the teeth of death itself.

In this mixed up land of ours, women are raped and girls molested. But the woman, thank god, is still too precious, even in death, to be abandoned.

I couldn't help recalling Prince Diana. What should a woman choose to be? Wife of Charles? Or, Dana's wife? I have two daughters. I know what I'd tell them.

Thank god, the media noticed this spectacle: at once a national shame and a human glory. But for the media, we would have granted Dana the indulgence to walk all of 10km. He was willing. He did not appear to have agonised over his option. The choice appeared to have been instinctive, like going to bed (?) with her while alive.

The only question that bothers me is this: why should the administration scramble up, only after the media lets loose wasps of visuals? Our tragedy is that the administration is still macho. Man lives in the public domain. (Dana Majhi is not your familiar "man". He is a human being. Ever tried to be one?) So, he is bothered only about appearances.

That's not how it is with a woman. She is the homemaker. She is the custodian of a caring culture, which has nothing to do with being seen.

Man, as man, does (ask not what he does) only to be seen as doing. (Women in administration, I beg of you; become not like men.)

We have no hope; the poor of this country can never have any hope, until our culture of governance is feminised. If I have an ambition - a personal goal - it is that I should evolve towards being a mother-man, like Dana Majhi.

So finally we have an icon for the feminist movement in this country. This man who has the heart of a mother - mother - India's own son.

Jai Hind!