January 18, 2026 07:35 AM IST First published on: Jan 18, 2026 at 07:35 AM ISTA teenage girl, drunk, in the back seat of a stranger’s car, alone, at night. What could possibly go wrong? Depends on where you live, actually. In a society where women in a far less vulnerable state have paid the price of daring to be out and about, and where instances of violence among women multiply by the minute, one can’t really be blamed for imagining the worst.This story, though, has a happy ending. The woman is dropped safely home, reassured throughout the commute that she is in a safe space; the stranger even advises her mother, worried sick on the phone, to rest easy. She will be home.AdvertisementThe scene played out recently, not in a short film but in real life, inside a taxi in Kolkata. The protagonist of the story is a cab driver, Munna Ajij Mollick, doing his nightly rounds when he finds himself in a tricky situation — being in charge of the safety of a girl completely off her face. Mollick puts on the car’s dash cam and records everything that unfolds over the next few minutes.“Uncle, I am so drunk. Can you help me with that?” says the girl, tapping the driver on the shoulder.“I know you are drunk, beta… please, please, please keep quiet, keep quiet. I will take you home.”AdvertisementThe conversation quickly assumes the shape of a banter between two siblings, with the mature, older one assuring the younger, footloose one, of not letting the parents know of the drunken stupor while also indulgently taunting them for being a “spoilt brat”.During the conversation, the vulnerability in the young woman’s voice shines through: “How will I go back home?”And then, the reply, “I will take you home. I will take you home.”One reason the now-viral reel touched a chord was that we all saw ourselves somewhere in that young woman who was Mollick’s passenger that night. Getting sloshed after a party, having a private moment with a partner in a thicket, finding oneself all alone on an empty road after a vehicle breakdown — we have all been there.And even as it makes us smile, the footage inside Mollick’s car makes us wonder: Why do we always imagine stories involving a vulnerable woman and a man in control to have a horrific end? How bad have we got as a society that this has become the default setting? That a cab driver driving a woman, drunk or not, safely home becomes an act of heroism as against simply being his job, as Mollick reminds his passenger more than once: “It’s my job. I will drop you home.”Women should not have to pay with their life or live with lasting trauma just because they wanted to get home after an office party, step out for a New Year celebration, or return after catching a late-night show with a male friend. In the aftermath of the 2012 Delhi rape-murder, I remember reading somewhere that “being safe in the city is a full-time job.” While reassuring his passenger, the Kolkata cab driver seems to reassure the rest of us, too, that it does not always have to be the case. That we can relax. And that we can safely get home.For his part, Mollick wore his sudden fame lightly. “The woman wasn’t fully conscious. So, I just had to tolerate her tantrums and ensure her safety, which I did. That’s my duty,” Mollick, a 31-year-old teaching aspirant, told The Indian Express recently.most readAlmost as amusing as the banter inside the car was Mollick’s mother’s reaction to the frenzy that followed the reel. “She just said, ‘Why are people praising you? What else are you expected to do?’,” shared Mollick.Maybe here lies the trick: Raising our boys right. Here’s to Munna Ajij Mollick, his wonderful mother and that awkward encounter between two strangers, a 31-year-old man and a drunk teenage girl, inside a cab in Kolkata. May every woman who finds herself in a situation like this get home just as safe.The writer is Assistant Editor, The Indian Express.deepika.singh@expressindia.com