Day and night, the man toils, hard at work. Some of his neighbors think that he has lost his mind, but he remains determined to conquer nature once and for all.

Dashrath Manjhi is this man, and he was born in 1934 in the small settlement of Gehlaur in the East Indian state of Bihar. As a boy, he left Gehlaur for the city to work in the coal mines, but he returned to his home village to get married.

In fact, Manjhi had met and wedded a local woman named Phalguni Devi, and he then began working as a laborer in the fields. This, however, was no simple task.