The real 'coolie no 1'- Sharing burden and feeding migrant workers

As the announcement is made at Lucknow's Charbagh railway station about the arrival of 'shramik special' trains carrying migrant workers, 80-year old Mujibullah Rehman goes an extra mile to help the poor migrant workers.

A coolie at the station for the past 50 years, Mujibullah virtually runs towards the train with a trolley filled with bananas, water bottles and some other eatables.

With love and affection, the octogenarian coolie, who is barely able to make two ends meet, puts the fruits and biscuits on the outstretched hands of the passengers from the windows of the train.

Clad in the coolie's uniform that displays his badge number 16, Mujibullah also keeps looking for the passengers, who alight from the train with heavy luggage.

He would run to them and offer to carry the luggage to the bus stand outside the platform. ''I have to answer to the Almighty also,'' Mujibullah would say if the passenger asked him about the charges.

''What I am doing is nothing if compared to the problems faced by the poor migrant workers....they have no money...we must help them in whatever way we can,'' he says.

What makes this coolie's service greater is that his income has taken a hit following closure of passenger trains for over two months following the lockdown.

Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra wrote a letter to him lauding his selfless service to the migrant workers. ''Your (Mujibullah) selfless service in this hour of crisis will always be remembered,'' Priyanka wrote in her letter.