MUMBAI: Little did auto driver Amit Gupta know that a good deed of returning a passenger’s forgotten bag would end his financial struggle to provide his children with education.

Two months ago, Sarla Namboodiri (68), who runs Arunodaya English School in Chembur for primary and preprimary kids, took Gupta’s auto to reach her car that was parked a little away from the institute. Namboodiri said, “I drive down to the school but I park my car a little away. As I have some difficulty in walking, after school, I take an auto till car park around 3pm.”

On December 21 too, she took an auto to reach the car but forgot to take her bag before getting off. “After reaching my car, I realized that I had left my bag in the auto and I panicked,” said Namboodiri.

The bag contained Rs 80,000 cash that was collected from students as fees, Namboodiri’s credit and debit cards, Aadhar card, driving licence, PAN card, car registration documents, two cellphones, house keys and locker keys.

“I live alone and the school was to stay shut the next day. For a minute, I did not know what to do. I drove to the school and asked the peon to look for the auto. One of the peons went up to the main road and approached a paan vendor, who said that the auto driver had made a stop at his shop and that his name was Amit Gupta,” said Namboodiri.

As Namboodiri had no contact of Gupta, she started considering approaching the police to lodge a complaint. But as luck would have it, half an hour later, Gupta returned to the school with the bag. He told her that another passenger had spotted the bag and he remembered it was Namboodiri’s.

“After he left, it struck me that I hadn’t taken his contact details and I wanted to do something for him. I approached the paan vendor, but the phone number he gave me was wrong,” said Namboodiri, who was later grounded for a few weeks due to ill health. However, she continued her hunt for the driver. Earlier this week, she managed to trace Gupta and called him to the school.

“I found out that he wasn’t doing well financially. I learnt that he had two kids but couldn’t afford to send them to school. Being a former teacher and with my experience in the education sector, I decided to provide his children free education,” said Namboodiri.

Gupta was felicitated and awarded Rs 10,000. “Had Gupta not brought my bag back, I would have had to face a lot of trouble,” she said.

