Favor banking

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कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन।

मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि॥ २-४७

Karmanye vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana,

Ma Karmaphalaheturbhurma Te Sangostvakarmani

That shloka is from Gita, do your duty and don’t bother about reward. But in today’s world everyone thinks why I should do for others when others don’t bother about me. Yes it is kind of selfish thinking.

Let us come to the ground reality. If without any ulterior motive one does for others then that favor done gets banked like one puts money in the bank. An honest receiver of favor always tries to return the favor and that return would be voluntary without any strings attached. This is known as favor banking.

The other day I noticed our maidservant is dusting the bookshelves and also folding our clothes. I was pretty surprised because she is supposed to clean utensils and sweep the floor. I asked my wife about this additional work what she was doing.

“She has started doing this on her own.” was her reply.

“Why suddenly?”

“Remember I got her the LPG connection!”

In her house our maidservant was using kerosene stove for cooking but she wanted a LPG gas connection, she did not have the requisite money. My wife paid the initial security amount; my wife took the pain of going with our maidservant in a rickshaw to the Indane distributor, filled up the form after getting all the relevant documents zeroxed. Now she got her gas and has given my wife’s mobile number as her LPG contact number. This extra effort was her way of showing gratitude to us.

As per my own experience I have seen lower strata people are more grateful than those who are in higher strata. In my service life I have helped many to climb the corporate ladder but at a later date majority of them acted as though they got it because they deserved it and no favor done.
This time when we went to Darjeeling we stayed in West Bengal Tourist Lodge,due to delay of our flight we could reach Darjeeling only at 8 pm in the night instead of scheduled arrival of 3pm. The room service man Ratan settled us down quickly by putting on the geezer,room heater etc. As per my practice i pay tips when i arrive and so tipped him 100 bucks. Next day early morning he served us bed tea, we looked out of the window and due to cloud Kanchanjungha was not visible and we told him so. He was also feeling sad that on the first day morning we could not see the great peak. We were having tea in our third floor room when heard a knock, opened the door and found Ratan gasping entered the room to inform that the cloud has moved away and Kanchanjungha was visible. Yes we went out in the balcony and got the magnificent view and thanked Ratan for his initiative and tipped him 50 bucks. This was the favor done by Ratan to us by giving that extra service of informing us timely the appearance of the peak.

While I was in Darjeeling the last date of a filling form of a golf tournament was over. The starters of golf course were more worried about that than me. They approached the management and got my name entered. Simultaneously another officer of the company sponsoring the tournament made sure my name is there, this senior officer had worked with me in my present company. This incident also proves that favor banking does work.

So friends try helping people and there is someone up there looking after you.