What would you do to ensure that your children's future will be better than the one you had? There are the obvious necessities that any parent should take into account when raising kids. First of all, it is vital to provide them with a materially good life, giving them shelter, food and water, and healthcare.
Children also need to be raised to be morally good, considerate, and well-rounded people, with the capacity to not only tell right from wrong but also to show compassion and altruism. Being a parent is a tough job. However, could you be the sort of parent who, in addition to all of the above, restructure kilometres of a difficult route to get your kids to school?
This is exactly what the father of the year in the video has done. Jalandhar Nayak took a pickaxe, a hoe, and a chisel and got to work to help his children attend their lessons easier. Nayak, who is from a far-away village in eastern India, in Odisha, cleared his way through eight kilometres of hilly terrain to carve the road. Before that, his three sons needed about three hours, either way, to get to school, walking through a treacherous route.
'My children found it hard to walk on the narrow path while going to school,' Nayak said. 'I often saw them stumbling against rocks and decided to carve a road through the mountains so that they can walk easier.'
Government officials shortly afterwards found out about his valiant efforts to have his children attend school easier and plan to pay him back. They even featured him in a local bulletin. 'Nayak’s determination and effort,' the local administrator, Brundha D, said, 'to cut mountains to build a road left me spellbound.' He also promised that Nayak would be compensated for constructing the road between the Phulbani school and his village, Gumsahi.
Nayak and the rest of his family are the only people who still live in Gumsahi, with the rest of the village's residents having left for places that can provide them with better lives through improved roads and other amenities.
Before government officials had found out about Nayak's efforts to carve this road, he had calculated that it would have taken three more years to finish the final seven kilometres linking Gumsahi to the school in Phulbani. He also said that the collector assured him that they would finish constructing the road to his village.
People compared Nayak's brave efforts to the case of Dashrath Manjhi from Bihar, a worker who spent more than two decades working his way through a mountain, once again building a road to cut the distance between two districts by 42 kilometres. However, rather than wanting to ensure that his kids could go to school, Manjhi was prompted by his wife being injured when she went over the mountain to bring him his lunch.
In fact, Manjhi's efforts became so popular that they were celebrated in many films, and he even received a state funeral. Do you think Nayak could be remembered with equal warmth and respect?