KOLKATA: A city cabby’s helping hand to a woman, who was returning home after a Christmas-eve party, has done what four years of reels could not achieve.Munna Ajij Mollick, who besides driving a cab on Kolkata’s streets also makes reels on Instagram, has suddenly got 31,000 likes for a reel that he posted on the last day of the old year. It showed him helping a passenger — a woman who could barely manage herself after a Christmas-eve party — right up to her Ultadanga home, opening the door with the key she gave him and then making her sit comfortably in a chair before leaving with a piece of advice: “Try to take better care of yourself and your Ma.”
ID@undefined Caption not available.ID@undefined Caption not available.Mollick has since deleted the video from his channel, Raste Pe Barta, after a request from the passenger, but it is widely available on other platforms.“I was a bit surprised that the video attracted so much attention. I guess even simple things now are going missing from our lives,” said the 31-year-old, also a trained primary teacher who has qualified Teacher Eligibility Test (TET). He added what he did was “basic humanity” that “anyone should show a fellow being”.“I started recording from the dashcam as I didn’t know what the passenger might do next. I have experienced similar situations before but with older passengers,” he said. The viral video shows Mollick trying to calm the visibly intoxicated woman who repeatedly asks, “Can you get me home safe, uncle? I am so drunk… can you help me with that?” Mollick asks her to relax and even assures her mother over phone that he would drop her home safely. “I will call you 5 minutes before I reach your residence,” Mollick is heard telling the mother. But when the cab reached her residence, the mother was still stuck somewhere. “I had to take the keys from her, open the door, and then lock the main gate again before handing the keys back,” the cab driver recounted.Hailing from a lower-middle-class family, Mollick had moved from East Burdwan to Kolkata in 2012 to enroll in college. He graduated from Syamaprasad College while working as a security guard to sustain himself. Later, with a scholarship from the state govt’s minority department, he completed three diplomas in IT and desktop publishing. He also completed DElEd and qualified TET, mandatory requirements for primary teaching. However, despite reaching the final interview stages and being empanelled multiple times, he did not get the final appointment letter.It was to sponsor his younger brother’s education that Mollick purchased a cab post-Covid after he was forced to leave his job as a security guard. Since then, he has been hitting the road each day between noon and 11 pm. “I keep hoping for a stable and more fulfilling career. I even attempted clerkship exams and WBCS but could not crack them,” he told TOI.His former employers, Rohina Mehrotra and her son Aniket, offer him shelter and parking space even after his security job ended. “I may never be able to repay them. If I have managed to survive in Kolkata, it is largely due to them,” says the cabby who lives in Padmapuke with his brother and father, also a security guard. “Wherever I end up, I wish to keep doing things that is good for society,” he added.
