Some days back I had the sense of watching a movie called “Invictus”. The movie prompted me to research about someone I knew only vaguely about before. With research, I found respect for “Madiba” or as the world knows him, “Nelson Mandela”. It is a known fact that Mandela was chosen president in the first ever democratic elections held in South Africa. What is not known is that before being chosen as president, Mandela spent 27 years in a prison cell which was half the size of my bathroom. His only luxury- A meeting with someone or a letter every six months.

What is even more surprising is that Mandela ruled the same people who put him in jail and ruled them with unmatched justice and fairness. As Matt Damon rightly puts it in the movie, “I am wondering how a man after 30 years in jail, comes out with the intention of forgiving the people who put him there." South Africa before Mandela was just a geographical division on the world map. Today, it is a highlighted division, a country that the world takes note of. All this was achieved from scratch and it was initiated with one man’s vision and his will to work tirelessly towards it. He sacrificed his own family life because according to him he had to take care of a much larger family. I had tears in my eyes when I saw Mandela come out to a stadium full of white people cheering him with 100% heart. I had tears because in my veins I felt the kind of impact the man had created. That was Morgan Freeman in Invictus. Nelson Mandela actually did it for a nation. Today we hide faces from the world under the rubble of broken bridges and try to find answers to a few thousand crores of rupees that have been wasted. What would I not give for my country to have a leader like Mandela.

The man is not from my nation,

Yet he seems like a friend…

His God is different to mine,

So I pray to his God…

Give him eternal life, let him always be

The world needs a few more like him, believe me.