It’s the summer of 2019.  My cousin and I are staring at the ceiling on our grandparents' couches, waiting for something interesting to happen. Our stomachs rumble. I walk to the pantry and I see nothing at all.  I shout to my cousin in Bengali, “THERE IS NO FOOD!”  So we go downstairs, walk outside, and we see our grandparents’ driver (it is normal in India for older people to have a driver). We are too hungry to think so we just tell him to drive us to Dominos.  He wisely tells us that the streets are crowded today and it's not going to be safe. My cousin looks at me and says it should be fine. Traffic in India is different from the USA. In India, we usually don't have traffic lights, and traffic can be horrendous in the evening when businesses open. But before I can reconsider, my cousin is dragging me into our grandparents’ car.

Our driver starts the car and swings by a sweets market to pick up some deep fried sugar sweets called Jalebi and Rosogolla. My cousin and I shove these in our mouths, not caring if our driver wants some. The drive is pretty normal…until we hit traffic.

We hit traffic when the shops started to open. Cows move across the streets, and rickshaws yell at each other.  Me and my cousin, bored and hungry, ask the driver what is happening. Our driver tells us not to worry and that the traffic will start to die off. My cousin shouts at the driver (keep in mind she was around 11): “I'm so hungry right now I could just eat this car!” I look at her and see she has gone insane from the sugar. I tell her to calm down…and then it strikes.

The collision is scary; I hear my cousin screaming and crying and our driver telling her to calm down. I turn my head around and see a giant bus has hit our grandparents’ small car. I hear our driver whimpering but he walks out and starts to shout at the bus. We hear the bus driver shouting at our driver and then traffic starts moving around us. Everything happens so quickly: one second I almost snapped my neck and then the next it is like nothing happened.

Buses are usually very slow in India but this bus flies away from us before we can report it to the police. I hear our grandparents’ driver talking on the phone about the damages. I just wait. All I can say is, “I’m hungry.”  Our driver says, “right” and gets in the car and drives us to Dominoes. As we head back we realize that we need to tell our parents this, but if we tell our parents, they will never let us go anywhere. So we tell the driver to not say anything.

The problem is, you can't hide a giant dent in the back of your grandparents’ car. Our mothers see us coming and next thing we know, they are questioning what happened, but the person being blamed is our driver. I realize our driver was just doing his job and still made us happy at the end of the day. I tell my uncle and aunt that it was our fault: without me and my cousin, this would have never happened. Without our driver, we could have been dead as he was there to tell us what to do after the accident. My gratitude to him is still with me today and every day. In America, I try to be more like him and spread his positivity to this world. Every day I pray under his name and I want the world to be a place where positivity is key. This is my story of my grandparents’ driver and how I am in debt to him every day.

© Antareep. All rights reserved. If you are interested in quoting this story, contact the national team and we can put you in touch with the author’s teacher.