The Broken Rickshaw

In 1989 I chanced upon an elderly man named Babbu Sidhu operating a bicycle rickshaw in India. I was his passenger and at one point the vehicle cracked and completely collapsed and broke in two. It was a mess and we draw a crowd of curious onlookers.

I slightly injured my leg and arm. The driver was uninjured but he sat on the curb weeping and he was very distraught. I thought, "I am the one who was injured, so why he is crying?"

A bystander explained to me that the rickshaw was both his home AND his livelihood. He barely made enough money each day (about $1.50) to buy a little food and he could never afford to repair his rickshaw..

I offered to make his rickshaw like new on the condition that he would go to Mother Teresa’s Home for the Destitute and Dying in the slums of Kolkata once a week for a year, and take the sisters wherever they needed to go at no charge. It cost all of $35 to repair and revamp the rickshaw. When I returned to Kolkata a few years later, I found out he had kept his word and the Sisters of the Mother Teresa order were very fond of Babbu Sidhu and gave him lots of business.