Everyone Does Their Own Work… The Joy Lies in Doing Something for Someone Else

A line from Bawarchi that somehow became the story of my life

Some films end when the screen fades to black.

Some don’t.

They quietly leave the theatre with you.

A song stays somewhere in your memory. A room from the film begins to resemble a room from your childhood. A character reminds you of someone you once knew.

And sometimes, a single line follows you for years.

For me, the spirit of one such line comes from Rajesh Khanna’s timeless film Bawarchi:

“Everyone does their own work. The joy you find in doing something for another person is something else altogether.”

When I first encountered that thought, perhaps I did not understand it.

We rarely understand such things when we are young.

At that age, a film is simply a film.

Life seems endless.

Friends seem permanent.

Parents seem as though they will never grow old.

Evenings seem longer.

And tomorrow always appears guaranteed.

Then life happens.

Years pass.

People arrive.

Some stay.

Some leave.

Some leave forever.

And one ordinary evening, you suddenly remember an old movie dialogue and realise:

I haven’t merely remembered this line. I have somehow been living it.

Bawarchi Nostalgia: When a Home Was Also a Character

There was something wonderfully intimate about old Hindi cinema.

Homes in those films weren’t merely sets.

They breathed.

There were verandahs, dining tables, open windows, kitchens full of steam, voices travelling from one room to another, people quarrelling over insignificant things and loving one another despite everything.

Bawarchi belonged to that world.

A household full of people living under one roof, yet emotionally drifting apart.

Everyone has a complaint.

Everyone believes someone else should understand.

Everyone is keeping a mental account of who did what.

And then a cook enters their lives.

Except he doesn’t merely cook food.

He begins cooking something far more precious—

togetherness.

He reminds them that happiness is not necessarily something we acquire.

Sometimes happiness is something we create for somebody else.

Perhaps that is why Bawarchi never really grows old.

Our houses have changed.

Our kitchens have become modular.

Our conversations have moved to smartphones.

But human beings?

We still want to be noticed.

We still want to be understood.

We still want somebody to ask,

“Are you all right?”

And actually wait for the answer.

Helping Others: The Strange Happiness That Has Followed Me Through Life

When I look back at my own journey, I realise that many things I did were never part of a grand plan.

Someone just needed something.

And I went.

A friend needed help.

A family member needed support.

A student was struggling.

Someone needed a phone call to be made.

Someone needed advice.

And sometimes someone needed nothing except another human being sitting beside them.

There have certainly been occasions when my own work remained unfinished while I became occupied with someone else’s problem.

And afterwards I have sometimes asked myself:

“Binnu, why do you get so involved in everybody’s problems?”

(Binnu is addressed because He lives in me.)

I have never found a convincing answer.

Perhaps because the answer isn’t logical.

There is simply a peculiar happiness in watching anxiety disappear from another person’s face.

And somewhere along the way I discovered something about myself:

I have never been very good at measuring happiness only by what I achieve for myself.

Some of my happiest moments have belonged to other people’s victories.

Friendship: When Someone Else’s Work Stops Feeling Like ‘Someone Else’s’

True friendship has a strange mathematics.

There are no calculations.

When a real friend asks for help, his work somehow stops being his work.

It becomes ours.

You drive somewhere because he needs you.

You make a phone call.

You rearrange your day.

You listen to the same problem for the fifth time.

Sometimes you give advice.

Sometimes you deliberately don’t.

Sometimes the greatest thing you can give a friend is your presence.

As I have grown older, I have realised that some people become punctuation marks in the sentences of our lives.

Life continues.

The sentence moves forward.

But remove them, and somehow its meaning changes.

Some friends are still around.

Some have travelled to the other side of time.

Some voices now survive only in memory.

Yet an old joke can suddenly bring an entire evening back.

And for a moment you desperately wish time had a reverse button.

Just one evening.

One table.

A few old friends.

Tea getting cold because nobody remembers to drink it.

Phones lying forgotten somewhere.

And endless conversations about things that were completely meaningless to the world—

but meant everything to us.

A few lines of my own:

We never kept accounts in friendship,
Never asked who gave more and who less.
Whenever an old friend called my name,
I rarely asked where—
I simply walked towards him.

I am the luckiest person who has friends at my every stages of life who were and some of them are still a piller of strength and support in every weal and woe and they are still making my boat floating in turbulent waters- some of the golden hearts are – Rajendra, Anil, Mushahid, Prem, Gyan, G.S. , Aashu, Santosh, and sonu and many more – some known and some unknown.

Is Living for Others an Impractical Way to Live?

The modern world teaches us to be practical.

Protect your time.

Focus on your career.

Set priorities.

Build boundaries.

Look after your own growth.

And none of this is wrong.

Yet sometimes I wonder whether, in making life extremely efficient, we have accidentally removed the beautiful inefficiencies that once made us human.

Today relationships can begin to resemble balance sheets.

I called him. Why didn’t he call me?

I helped her. What did she do for me?

I visited them. When did they last visit me?

Once relationships become accounting, affection begins to be priced.

Maybe I was a misfit at this kind of accounting.

But strangely, those experiences never completely took away my desire to help.

Because eventually I learnt:

The reward for kindness is not always gratitude.

Sometimes the reward is simply lying down at night knowing—

someone’s day became a little easier because I was there.

That can be enough.

A Teacher Learns That the Greatest Rewards Don’t Appear on a Salary Slip

Teaching perhaps strengthened this philosophy in me.

Because teaching was never merely about completing chapters.

Sometimes you teach grammar.

Sometimes vocabulary.

Sometimes pronunciation.

And sometimes you teach something that isn’t printed anywhere in the textbook—

confidence.

A student looks at you and says,

“Sir, I can’t do this.”

And perhaps the most important lesson begins there.

You say:

“Try once more. You can.”

Then one day the same child answers correctly.

There is a tiny sparkle in the eyes.

The world may consider it an insignificant moment.

But a teacher knows.

There is no column for that happiness on a salary slip.

Some earnings go into bank accounts.

Others go into memory.

And strangely enough, the wealth stored in memory often survives much longer.

When Helping a Neighbour Wasn’t Something Worth Posting About

I often miss another world too.

The world of smaller towns and old neighbourhoods.

When guests arrived unexpectedly at someone’s house, another family sent extra chairs.

If there was a wedding, the entire neighbourhood somehow became part of the wedding committee.

Someone needed utensils?

“Take ours.”

Someone had to go to the railway station?

“What time are we leaving?”

Was someone ill?

“I’ll come with you.”

Nobody called it networking.

Nobody called it community building.

Nobody took a photograph to prove that kindness had occurred.

There was no status update.

No reel.

No caption announcing generosity.

Kindness wasn’t content.

It was simply behaviour.

Perhaps that is one reason those memories still feel warm.

The Philosophy of Bawarchi: Happiness May Be Closer Than We Think

We spend enormous portions of our lives searching for happiness.

A better house.

More money.

Recognition.

Travel.

Success.

Followers.

Achievements.

And then, occasionally, happiness walks into the room disguised as something embarrassingly ordinary.

Ten unhurried minutes with your mother.

Listening to your father’s old story for the hundredth time.

An argument with your brother that ends in laughter.

A daughter’s laughter floating through the house.

An unexpected phone call from an old friend.

Or a former student meeting you years later and saying:

“Sir, do you remember what you told me that day?”

And you don’t.

That is the extraordinary part.

You may have forgotten the moment completely.

But they haven’t.

Perhaps this is one of life’s quietest miracles:

Something insignificant to us can become an unforgettable moment in somebody else’s story.

Kindness Doesn’t Mean Forgetting Yourself

Age, however, teaches balance.

Not every story of helping others ends beautifully.

Sometimes people disappoint us.

Sometimes generosity exhausts us.

And sometimes we realise that being kind and being endlessly available are not the same thing.

Still I believe deeply in the spirit of that old Bawarchi thought—

there is extraordinary happiness in doing something for another person.

But today I would add something.

Light a lamp for others.

Certainly.

But don’t extinguish every lamp in your own house to do it.

Because you can continue giving light only while some light remains within you.

One Day, All of Us Will Become Someone’s Memory

Perhaps this is the most beautiful and frightening truth that comes with age.

One day our achievements will become old information.

Certificates will remain inside files.

Business cards will become irrelevant.

Social-media posts will disappear beneath thousands of newer posts.

But somewhere, perhaps, one person will remember:

“There was a difficult period in my life, and he stood beside me.”

A student might remember:

“When I didn’t believe in myself, Sir did.”

A friend might say:

“I called him late at night, and he never asked why I was calling so late.”

Someone in the family may remember:

“He understood before I had to ask.”

If a few people can say such things about us after we are gone…

perhaps that is not a small life at all.

Perhaps that is a life wonderfully lived.

Why Bawarchi Feels Even More Relevant Today

The world around us has changed beyond recognition.

We have faster phones.

Instant messaging.

Artificial intelligence.

Video calls.

Social networks connecting millions of people.

And yet sometimes I wonder whether the emotional distance between two human beings has actually increased.

Perhaps that is why films like Bawarchi matter even more today.

They aren’t asking us to return to the past.

They are asking us to return to certain values from the past.

Call an old friend.

Sit beside an elderly person and listen without checking the time.

Encourage a child.

Help somebody without announcing it.

Ask someone:

“Are you really okay?”

And don’t immediately change the subject.

Perhaps changing the world doesn’t always require a revolution.

Sometimes making someone a cup of tea is enough.

Sometimes answering a phone call is enough.

Sometimes saying—

“Don’t worry. I’m here.”

—is enough.

If I Had to Describe My Life in One Line…

If someone asked me today to choose one sentence that describes the way I have tried to live, I probably wouldn’t select a grand quotation about ambition.

Not one about winning.

Not one about success.

I would return instead to an old Hindi film.

To slower storytelling.

To a house full of quarrelling people.

To Rajesh Khanna’s unforgettable warmth.

To a cook who arrives to prepare meals but quietly teaches a family how to live together again.

And to that simple thought:

“Everyone does their own work. The joy you find in doing something for another person is something else altogether.”

Because ultimately, perhaps life will not be measured only by how much we accumulated for ourselves.

Perhaps the more important questions will be:

Whose road became slightly easier because we were there?

Who smiled because we showed up?

And who felt less alone because we answered the phone?

And if someday, on the final page of my story, someone has to write just a few lines about me, I would like them to be very simple:

He did not change the whole world.
He simply tried, wherever his hands could reach,
to make sure someone did not have to face it alone.

Perhaps that is enough.

Perhaps that was always the point.

That is friendship.
That is kindness.
That is humanity.
And perhaps, in the end, that is life.

— Binnu