One of a Kind of Kindness

A few weeks ago, I broke my chappal. I didn't go all woe is me and why do bad things happen to good people because it's 2026 and God bless 10-minute deliveries. Order placed. Within the hour, I had a miniature rocket-shaped bottle of shoe-fix.

Later that day, the security guard at my workplace asked, "Don't you think you should have checked with me before placing that order?"

For a split second, I did go all woe is me. Maybe I'd missed some organisational protocol. Maybe quick deliveries were secretly frowned upon. I gave him a sheepish smile and was halfway to apologising when the whole thing went delightfully anticlimactic.

"We keep these things with us all the time," he said. "You simply spent money."

Never had someone else's disappointment in me felt so oddly heartwarming.

My assumption that I was on my own had quietly erased someone else's chance to help.

When I say kindness, what comes to your mind?

Would I be wrong to assume you probably thought of an action? A thought? An experience from the perspective of the giver? Take a moment to think about it as the receiver instead.

For the longest time, I thought kindness had to be cinematic. Sword-wielding. Cape-flowing. Time-pausing. The kind where you solve problems, rescue people, become someone's pillar. The kind that inspires poems and standing ovations. The kind where, somewhere, a little kid is asked what they want to be when they grow up and, with sparkly eyes, says, "You."

Then the bubble pops.

Reality is where it should be illegal for anyone to make eye contact with you before caffeine enters your bloodstream. It's bargaining with rickshaw drivers over five rupees. It's your coworker enthusiastically slurping her tea.

So much for cape-flowing kindness.

Because more often than not, our realities are quiet cries for the world to show us kindness.

Somewhere along the way, we learnt to mistake self-sufficiency for strength. We learnt that asking for help is an inconvenience. That if we mattered enough to someone, they'd somehow know we needed them without us having to say it. Perhaps that's why it has become easier to confess our hearts into the void than place them in the hands of someone who knows our name.

And so kindness begins to feel like a fairytale, not because people aren't kind, but because we're waiting for them to read chapters we never handed them.

Which brings me back to the rocket-shaped bottle of shoe-fix.

I wasn't incapable. I wasn't stranded. I was hyper-independent, financially secure enough to order glue without a second thought.

But why didn't I ask first? Not because no one would've helped.

Because I never stopped to consider that someone might have wanted to. That question keeps following me into other ordinary moments.

• The time someone carried a file for me because it was on their way.
• The time I apologised after ranting for fifteen seconds, only to be met with, "It's okay."
• The rickshaw driver who didn't complain about the lack of change.
• The stranger I bumped into who apologised before I could.
• The senior colleague who insisted I eat cucumbers because it was unbearably hot.
• The silence I hated then, only to realise later it had stopped a conversation from becoming cruel.
• The time connections I assumed that mattered to only me more, checked with me multiple times a day if I was okay, when I was perturbed about something.
• And because no story about my life is ever quite complete without my cat, I'd be remiss not to mention the way he keeps me company when the house grows particularly silent.

The countless moments I dismissed as routine until hindsight quietly renamed them kindness.

You'll probably say, "Tanisha, that's just the bare minimum."

Maybe.

But I wonder if we've become too quick to dismiss the bare minimum.

Because when capitalism, war, inflation, rising living costs, religious divides, cybercrime, animal abuse, mental health crises, climate anxiety and impossible workdays have all left us a little frayed, perhaps what keeps us together isn't extraordinary kindness.

Perhaps it's the ordinary kind.

• Rocket-shaped bottles of shoe-fix waiting in a security cabin.
• Someone carrying your file because it was on their way.
• Cucumbers sliced because it was hot.
• Five rupees quietly forgiven.
• A silence that chose not to wound.

They're small enough to miss. Small enough to call ordinary. Small enough to call the bare minimum. But perhaps that's precisely why they matter. Perhaps kindness rarely arrives dressed as heroism. Perhaps it arrives quietly, almost forgettably, woven into someone's day long before we realise we needed it.

The kind that reminds us, in ways so ordinary they're easy to overlook, that we were never as alone as we assumed. It can save us... one of the kinds of kindness. 

Hey, reader! It was kind enough of you to read this through. Thank you.

If you'd like to extend that kindness, I'd love to hear about one small act, thought, or few simple words that quietly turned a rainy day around for you. Or simply share what kindness is for you.

16.12.2018. Seven years later, I still remember this conversation. That's how quietly kindness lingers. The kind I am talking about. 

Let's gather little proofs that we're made for better things.

Perhaps we'll discover a few more kinds of kindness together.

P.S. If this reminded you of someone, perhaps share it with them. That, too, might be one of the kinds of kindness.