The final bell rang and we all lined up to go home. I scanned the faces of the parents and guardians waiting near the gate but I couldn’t see the familiar smiling face of Sitaram, the driver who came every day to pick me. This was decades ago in Kolkata when I was in the first standard and my father, who was a senior executive in a multi-national company, used to send the car and driver to take me home.
A strange man approached me and said that father had sent him to pick me up as Sitaram was engaged elsewhere that day. He was wearing spotless white dhoti-kurta and looked every inch a bhadralok (Bengali for respectable gentleman), so I went off with him without a murmur.
He took me to a rickshaw, the sort pulled by men—which surprised me. Had I expected father to send another car? Perhaps. As soon as we climbed into it, I announced that we should pick up my sister, too. Though my sister and I attended the same school, our classes were in different buildings. “Oh, do you have a sister?” said the stranger, sounding surprised. While going towards her building, he remarked that my earrings were becoming loose due to the jerking of the rickshaw and it would be a good idea to remove them. I was wearing pretty gold earrings with pearl drops and knew they were fastened well. I assured him that nothing would happen but he was insistent. He pulled out a pair of pliers and expertly undid the gold twists that fastened the earrings and placed them in my school bag, or at least, that’s what I thought he did.
When we reached my sister’s school building, he jumped out to fetch her and disappeared. After waiting in vain for him for what seemed like hours, it dawned on me that something fishy was going on and I started to cry. The kindly rickshaw puller offered to take me home and to my horror, I realised that I had forgotten the name of the street I stayed on. Fear had made my mind a complete blank. The rickshaw puller then sensibly took me back to my school and escorted me to the headmistress’s office. The headmistress was overjoyed to see me and enveloped me in a bear hug. She at once called up mother to say that I had been found.
It transpired that Sitaram had come to the school a little late that day. Not finding me, he had picked up my sister and taken her home. When he informed mother about my having gone missing, she had been frantic with worry. She had called the school and informed father, who rushed home to make a police complaint.
Today, when I read the horrifying and gut-wrenching accounts of the attacks on women and children, I thank my lucky stars that my story had a happy ending.