Do good and forget you did it: The anti-self-help book for a kinder world

There are books that explain goodness, and then there are books that practice it—quietly, without announcing their arrival, without demanding applause. Sewa – The Road to Salvation, by Dr. Surender Singh Kandhari, belongs resolutely to the latter. It does not raise its voice. It lowers it. And in that lowering—gentle, grounded, unspectacular—it teaches us what service truly is.

Sewa is not a book about charity. It is a book about conduct. About how one stands in the world when no one is watching. About what one does when suffering appears—uninvited, inconvenient, relentless—and asks only this: Will you show up?

Sevadars working in the Guru’s kitchen. (Source: https://www.sikhiwiki.org/)

Rooted in Sikh thought yet unbounded by sect, Kandhari’s book returns us to the elemental truth that sewa is not an act but a way of being. “Serving Everyone Without Appreciation,” he reminds us—an ethic as radical today as it was when Guru Nanak first dissolved hierarchies by asking kings and labourers to sit together on the same floor, eat the same food, and bow to the same humanity. Sikhism did not invent kindness, but it institutionalised dignity. It made compassion operational.

Across these pages, Kandhari writes with a clarity that is both devotional and practical. He speaks of sewa of the body, the mind, the time, the wealth—but more insistently, of the sewa of intention. The kind where the left hand does not know what the right has done. The kind my mother spoke of, not as scripture but as common sense. The kind that refuses credit because it understands that credit corrodes compassion.

What makes this book quietly extraordinary is that it is not aspirational—it is evidentiary. Kandhari does not theorise service; he lives it. In Dubai, at the Gurudwara Guru Nanak Darbar, langar does not pause for weekends or weather or headlines. It feeds thousands daily, regardless of passport, prayer, or position. During global calamities—pandemics, earthquakes, displacement—Sikh volunteers appear with food, water, medicine, oxygen, shelter. Not branded. Not broadcast. Just present.

This is where Sewa becomes more than philosophy; it becomes proof. When the world fractures, Sikhism arrives with steel containers and soft hearts. When systems fail, sewadars step in—not as saviours, but as servants. Kandhari captures this ethic without spectacle. He understands that true service is allergic to performance.

The prose is calm, almost meditative, yet it carries an unmistakable urgency. In a time when generosity is often curated for visibility, Sewa insists on anonymity. In an age of performative outrage, it chooses patient repair. Kandhari writes not to impress but to invite—to ask the reader, gently but persistently: Where can you serve today? Who can you ease, without calculation?

And this is where the book’s power deepens. It does not ask for heroism. It asks for availability. A meal cooked quietly. A call made without agenda. A kindness extended without receipt. Kandhari reminds us that sewa does not require scale—it requires sincerity. That the smallest act, done with humility, can reorder a life.

What also distinguishes Sewa is its profound interfaith grace. Kandhari understands service as the common grammar of all belief systems. He draws resonances across Sikhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism—not to flatten difference, but to elevate convergence. Service, he argues, is the only language the divine never needs translated.

In this sense, the book feels urgently contemporary. We live in an era addicted to opinion and starved of care. We debate endlessly, yet hesitate to act. Sewa is a corrective—not ideological, but ethical. It reminds us that the measure of a civilisation is not how loudly it speaks, but how reliably it feeds, shelters, heals.

There is a Punjabi saying Kandhari echoes—chhatiyaan daachi te bhool jao: do good and forget you did it. This book embodies that principle. It will not trend. It will endure. It will sit quietly on shelves and beside beds, waiting for the reader to be ready—not to agree, but to act.

The aftertaste of Sewa – The Road to Salvation is not sentiment; it is resolve. A resolve to be useful. To be kind without witnesses. To serve without scorekeeping. In a world desperate for spectacle, Kandhari offers something far rarer: a manual for decency.

And perhaps that is the most radical act of all.