The Blue Taxis

Three years ago, my daughter went to Shanghai to take up a lecturing position at a college there. I accompanied her to help her settle down.

On the last day of my stay in Shanghai, before going to the airport, I went with her to the rented apartment, to help her settle into her new home. We took a taxi across town.

About five minutes after paying the taxi fare and alighting from the taxi, my daughter realised that she had left her handbag in the car, which contained all the deposit money and keys to the apartment, ALL the money meant for her stay there, her passport, legal documents, university pass, portfolios and credentials.

My first thought was that I would have to miss my plane and we would have to go to Beijing, the capital, to settle this mess. Her first lecture was to start the following day! She might even have been fired from her position by not being able to start work as it would have taken a while to get clearance from the Beijing authorities.

The next thing I did was to rush out onto the main road to see if the taxi was still around somehow. When I reached the main road, there were dozens of taxis on the road. A sense of hopelessness came over me as I could not remember the number nor even the color of the taxi.

I returned to the apartment and it was getting dark now. I asked my daughter if she could remember anything. She remembered that the car was blue but couldn’t recall the number at all. I thought to myself, “But all the taxis are blue!!” At this point, I prayed to the Protector.

Amazingly, my mind cleared and somehow the number of the taxi and the color (blue with a yellow stripe) appeared clearly to my mind. But what was I to do next? Another taxi pulled up suddenly and the driver asked if I needed help (perhaps seeing my daughter and I standing outside the apartment at night with luggage).

I told him about the situation and he immediately used his mobile phone to call the company which owned the particular taxi I had described. The man said there were hundreds of these taxis out there and all the company could do was to send a bulletin out to all their vehicles and see if that particular taxi driver would respond and come back to the apartment to return the bag.

In my mind, it was unlikely that the employer from the company would have done as he had promised let alone a taxi driver returning a bagful of money. It was likely that, in between all this, he had already picked up a passenger who could have taken the bag without the driver even knowing. The kind taxi driver told me to expect the worst. All the above scenarios were very probable and the odds were piling up with each passing minute.

But I did not give up hope and continued praying to the Protector. It was about half an hour later when a taxi pulled up. The driver alighted and greeted us with the bag in his hand asking if this was our bag. He seemed very happy to return it and said he had not even opened it!

Nothing was missing when my daughter checked the bag. We tried very hard to give this honest driver a reward but he insisted on not accepting anything, saying repeatedly that it was the right thing for him to do.

Everything ended fine. My daughter finally settled into her apartment and I caught my flight home, thanks to the Protector.

~ Vinay ~