Life is full of surprises and some incidents have the capability to change the perspective of things around you. This is the inspiring story of a rickshaw puller, Bablu Shekh, who saved a girl from committing suicide. According to a Facebook post shared by famous photographer GMB Akash, the girl was reportedly going through a bad phase in her personal life and had decided to jump in front of a train.
She tried to do so. However, Shekh managed to pull her away from the train tracks and saved her life. Despite saving the girl’s life, the rickshaw puller had to listen to all her abuses, because the girl was angry at him for interfering at the last moment!
Years later, Shekh met with an accident and the same girl whom he had stopped from committing suicide, saved him. Had he not saved her, the girl wouldn’t have become a doctor. It was this sweet coincidence (or fate) that filled his heart with pride.
Here’s what Bablu Shekh told GMB Akash:
“We always wanted a daughter. But we have three sons. I often told my wife only fortunate have daughter. I am working as a rickshaw puller for more than thirty years. Most of my passengers were bad tempered. They always scolded me. One morning a father hired me to take his daughter to the college. He requested me to be careful in the road. He told his daughter to hold the rickshaw tightly. Before we left he told me to go slowly so the girl may not get hurt.
On our way after sometime I heard the girl was crying insanely. I tried to look back and wanted to ask her if everything was okay. She scolded me and warned me not to look back. After a while she asked me to stop and started calling someone by her phone.
She was screaming and crying all the time. I understood she supposed to escape from home with a boy. He did not show up. Suddenly she jumped from the rickshaw, left the money in the seat and quickly went to the train line. I was about to leave, felt sorry for the father and thought it may be good not to have a daughter. But I was not able to paddle further; I heard her father was requesting me to be careful. I parked my vehicle and ran for the girl.
She was in the rail line, moving like a sick person to harm herself. I went near to her and requested her to go back with me. She yelled at me, called me uneducated stupid, in between she kept crying insanely. I was afraid to leave her in that empty place. I let her cry, as much as she wanted. Almost three hours we were there and rain was about to come. Before the rain starts she got up and asked me to bring the rickshaw. We did not talk about anything.
In the rain I paddled quickly. I dropped her near her house. Before I left she stopped me and said, ‘Uncle, you should never come at my place again, never tell anyone you know me.’ I lowered my head and returned to home. That day I did not talk to anyone, I did not eat anything. I told myself it was better not to have a daughter.
After more than eight years, very recently I had an accident. I was kind of senseless. Public took me to the hospital;. When I got back my sense I saw the girl was working near me, she asked me how I was feeling, why I never went to meet her. It was hard for me to recognize the girl in white dress, in spectacle and stethoscope. My treatment went well.
I was taken to a big doctor. I was listening to her telling him, ‘Sir, he is my father’. The old doctor told her something in English. Then she touched my injured hand and replied him, ‘If this father did not support me in the past, I won’t be able to become a doctor’. I was lying in a narrow bed and tightly shut my eyes. I cannot tell anyone how I felt. This rickshaw puller has a daughter, a doctor daughter.”
It’s just amazing to see how Shekh went out of his way to help a person in dire need of hope in life. It is people like him that restore our faith in humanity.
