The Essay That Got Me Into My Top Universities
By: Vani S.
Tags: Common Application, University, University Admissions, College Essay Writing, India

I wrote this essay for my Common Application. It’s about one of my most memorable days from when I lived in India.

We have an expression in Calcutta: if you want to give a white man a heart attack, have him ride the passenger seat of a local taxi. Growing up in India for the first twelve years of my life, my relationship with Calcutta developed in the chaotic car rides that mapped each corner of the city.

On the last Holi, the Hindu “festival of color,” that I celebrated in India, one car ride became a paragon of this bittersweet mayhem. As we made our yearly trip down to the local mandir, my grandmother and I turned the corner of our apartment building onto Diamond Harbour Road. I feverishly looked through my window, fascinated by the color and energy that seamlessly diluted the pollution, sweat, and dirt staining the glass.

Liquid crimson trickled down water balloons, yellow rung burst through the delicate plastic of pichkari water guns, and shades of blue and purple pooled over street drains as children and adults alike played amongst each other. My grandmother and I handed out sacred homemade desserts, or prashad, to the children and stray dogs that lived on the street. Every Holi, this ritualistic celebration of community instilled in me a cathartic value for service and human connection.

Afterwards, we traveled across to the other side of Majerhat Bridge and turned a left onto Ballygunge Street. It was here that our car took a turn into a darker reality of life in Calcutta.

Inching forward ever so slightly, I saw that a taxi in the neighboring lane had suffered a brutal hit-and-run accident. I noticed a young man knocked unconscious, as his head hung out of the passenger seat from the opened door. He was trapped in the unnavigable congestion of traffic, and the nearest hospital was notorious for its scarcity in doctors, staff, and transportation.

Liquid crimson trickled down from a laceration on his forehead and stained the chipped yellow on the taxi. Shades of blue and purple pooled over the crushed tips of his fingers. His skin was a thin, translucent veil on the protruding bone on his left dislocated shoulder. I was horrified.

Distraught by the violent sight of this passenger’s death, I could not bear to look into his vacant eyes, devoid of any breath or consciousness. At eleven years old, an uncharted mix of anxiety, helplessness, and outrage crept over me. I quietly watched his chest decompress into his deflated body as his final breath slipped away, and the taxi driver, with his fingers pressed against the wrist of his passenger, could no longer feel a pulse beating against his skin.

I desperately tried to turn away to preserve the naive peace in my heart.

But, turning away is a frightening oversight to the things that need to be seen and remembered. He deserved to be seen. He deserved to be fought for. Witnessing this passenger’s premature death was my initiation into an unprecedented yet pivotal period of maturation.

The juxtaposition of vibrant compassion and unruly darkness woven into a single day’s journey in Calcutta has evolved into a greater understanding of my vision for the future. Over the past few years, I have taken this memory of a devastating loss coupled with a familial tradition of benevolence and manifested it into a passion for change on larger cultural and systemic scales.

Since that Holi, I have learned that to become alert to the pain and injustice of the world is to recognize the truly meaningful elements of life. When we fill our lives with a dedication to a greater good, it is then that life becomes meaningful.

I carry this philosophy in everything I pursue. As I grow, I want to map the corners of this world with my persistent faith in being an agent for the greater good.

As I grow, I continue to carry this man’s death as an inextinguishable fire to my endeavors.