Nightly midnight jog by Indian teen inspires millions on Twitter

19-year-old Pradeep Mehra on his 5-mile run home after his shift ends at McDonald's. A chance encounter with a filmmaker led to a video that's gone viral. (Vinod Kapri via Twitter/Screengrab by NPR)

At 11:45 p.m. on March 19, Vinod Kapri, a former TV journalist and award-winning filmmaker, was returning home from a dinner. As he was cruising along Golf Course Road in the northern Indian city of Noida, near New Delhi, he spotted a kid racing along in the dead of the night.

Kapri says he was alarmed at first — worried that the boy was in trouble. And so he slowed down and cranked open a window.

“Do you need help?” he asked.