At 80, this Kolkata taxi driver still works 16-hour days to care for his ailing wife

Most people dream of slowing down by the time they turn 80. Rabindranath Sarkar doesn’t have that luxury. Every morning, while much of Kolkata is just waking up, he gets behind the wheel of a yellow taxi and heads out onto the city’s busy roads, not chasing a career milestone but simply trying to earn enough to look after his wife.

A video shared by Kolkata-based content creator Chaitali Bose has brought Sarkar’s story to thousands of people online. According to Bose, Sarkar has been driving taxis for more than five decades, and even today, at nearly 80, his day begins around 6 in the morning and sometimes doesn’t end until 11 pm — almost 16 hours on the road.

The taxi isn’t even his own; he rents it daily, paying the owner a fixed amount whether he gets enough passengers or not. Sarkar and his 67-year-old wife live in a small tin-roofed house near the railway tracks in Dum Dum, with no children to support them, and every expense from food to medicines depends on what he earns that day. Bose says Sarkar suffers from chronic asthma while his wife has a heart condition, yet giving up work isn’t really an option.

What has moved many people online isn’t just his determination but also his kindness — Sarkar reportedly tells passengers to pay whatever they think is fair, despite his own struggles to make ends meet. Towards the end of the video, Bose appealed to viewers to help the elderly couple in whatever way they could.