There's a bench outside an old locksmith's shop, wedged under a banyan tree, worn smooth by thousands of people who've sat there over the years. Nobody knows who put it there. It's just always been there, holding up strangers waiting for a bus, an auto, a friend running late.

One evening, an elderly woman was resting on it, fanning herself with a folded newspaper. A man sat beside her, more out of habit than need. She caught the man staring at the bench's cracked wood and smiled. "My husband built this," she said, like she'd been waiting years for someone to ask. "Forty-three years ago. He wasn't rich, wasn't famous. Just a man who noticed people standing in the sun with nowhere to sit." She ran her finger along a carved initial only she could still find. "He passed eleven years ago. Never once heard a stranger say thank you. Didn't need to."

The man asked her if that made her sad — building something so quietly, so invisibly. She laughed, soft and sure. "Sad? Look around." She gestured at the street — a delivery boy resting his bike, a mother adjusting her daughter's shoes, two old friends laughing mid-conversation, all on that one bench.

"He's still taking care of people. Just doesn't need to be there to do it anymore."

So much of what you do today will reach someone you never meet.