Fortune smiles on man who bore his wife’s body home

First a house, then a wife, and now a motorbike. Life has turned on its head for Dana Majhi, the poor Odisha tribal man who was forced to carry his wife’s body home from hospital on his shoulder.

On Tuesday, Majhi travelled from Bhawanipata in Kalahandi district to his village Melghar under Thuamul Rampur block on a spanking new Honda motorcycle.

Last year in August, a penniless Majhi, accompanied by a sobbing daughter, had walked the same road carrying the body of his wife, Amang Dei, tightly wrapped in cloth on his shoulder.

The district hospital where Dei died of tuberculosis had no ambulance available. And Majhi could not afford to pay for transport.

Images of the hapless Majhi’s 10-km walk had triggered global outrage and prompted many, including the prime minister of Bahrain, to loosen their purse strings for Odisha’s marginal farmer.

The turnaround in Majhi’s status has been swift. The Bahraini prime minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa gave him ₹9 lakh. Other individuals and organisations also chipped in and Majhi, who never had a bank account earlier, now has sizeable fixed deposit that will mature in five years.

Even the administration, often considered insensitive to people’s plight, came to his aid and allotted him a house under the Pradhan Mantri Grameen Awas Yojana. The house is under construction and he is at present living in the village Anganwadi centre. His three daughters are in a residential school in Bhubaneswar after an educational institute offered to provide them free education.

And in between, Majhi remarried. His new wife, Alamati Dei, is now pregnant.

BHUBANESWAR: IMAGES OF THE HAPLESS MAJHI’S 10KM WALK WITH THE BODY HAD TRIGGERED OUTRAGE, AND DONATIONS HAD POURED IN