More Than Just a Nice Gesture

Creating Ripples of Kindness Because Every One Matters

You’ll see this newsletter come from “Mansi — The Ripple Maker” instead of MansiMakes. This isn’t just a name change. It’s an intentional shift that represents what I do daily and who I am: creating connections, spreading smiles and practicing presence.

As I continue making and handing out little tokens of appreciation and gratitude to community members, I have been thinking a lot about why I feel this pull to continue. Sure, the smiles and hugs I receive daily are a great motivator but there is something deeper than this addiction to “feeling good.”

It’s a story that begins in the quiet corners of my childhood home in India, where invisibility was my closest companion and books were my escape route from reality.

I was an only child, coming home to empty rooms while my parents worked long hours. As they went through the daily grind to ensure I lead a comfortable life, I learned how to move silently through spaces. As their daily spats revealed the deep fissures of their fractured marriage, I learned how to take up less room. As I realized that being sexually abused was “a part of life,” I learned how to fade into wallpaper.

The house was never truly empty, though — there were always the helpers, the maids, the drivers. But they existed in a parallel universe, one created by rigid class structures and generations of ingrained hierarchy.

I watched, silently, as our household help was handed castoffs – ill-fitting clothes, leftover food, discarded items deemed no longer worthy of those who considered themselves “above.”

Chai served in cups that were set aside for the untouchables.

I remember going to fetch the maid sometimes from her house — a one-room rudimentary structure for her family of six, built primarily from mud brick, with a thatched roof, no sanitation facilities and poorly insulated — so my mom could shout at her for being late.

“The vegetables aren’t going to chop themselves are they?” she would yell, as the maid softly mumbled something about her gassy infant.

The message was clear and cutting: some people were worth less than others. Some labors made you invisible. Some roles stripped you of your right to dignity.

“Here,” my mother would say, holding out a worn sari or a partially-used bottle of perfume to our maid, "you can have this." Not as a gift given with love, but as something dispensed with casual indifference. The maid would accept with lowered eyes and a murmured "thank you," and something in my chest would tighten.

Mom felt so pompous about it, too, recounting how magnanimous she was to her friends despite the scrum “these people” were.

These people.

The same people that enabled her life to be filled with ease.

This wasn’t just about class – it was about caste, about deeply embedded social structures that determined human worth based on accident of birth.

Everyday, I witnessed firsthand how people could occupy the same physical space yet exist in completely different worlds — one visible, valued, and validated; the other invisible, dispensable, and dismissed.

These memories surface unexpectedly now, in the subtle choreography of modern life — when I notice how eyes slide past the person cleaning tables at a café, how we only ask for someone’s name when we want to make a complaint to their manager, how quick we are to transform people into functions: the barista, the custodian, the clerk.

The discrimination may be less overt, the hierarchies less rigid, but the message remains familiar: some people are meant to fade into the background of our lives.

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Fast forward to today, where I sit in cafes and train stations, a portable watercolor kit always at my side. Those childhood memories haven’t faded – they’ve transformed into fuel for a quiet revolution of recognition. Each token I create carries the weight of that understanding, transformed into something healing, something whole.

They have become the change I wish to see.

When I write a personal note to the team of baristas at Red Rock, acknowledging their “happiness-induced creations,” I’m challenging the hierarchy that once taught me some people were worth only leftovers. When I create a happy assemblage of abstract flowers for the booth assistant at the farmers’ market letting him know he is appreciated and valued, I am trying to make amends.

Amends for the times I stayed silent, for the moments I watched our maid accept humiliation with lowered eyes and didn’t speak up. When my mother would berate her, I’d hide behind my books, pretending not to hear, pretending not to understand.

But I did hear. I did understand. And every time I chose not to speak, I became complicit in maintaining the status quo.

My silence then was a form of participation, and I’ve carried that guilt over the years. These tokens now are not just acts of kindness — they’re acts of redemption.

These aren’t random acts of kindness left anonymously on park benches. They’re not artist trading cards exchanged within creative circles. They’re intentional moments of connection. They’re moments of conscious courage, of choosing to be the voice I wish I’d had the strength to be all those years ago.

Each token is accompanied by conversation, by eye contact, by the vulnerability of saying, “I see you. Your work has dignity. Your presence matters.”

I keep my watercolor kit ready because I never know when I’ll encounter someone who needs reminding of their worth. These moments — these people — are too precious to let slip away without acknowledgment.

When my daughter watches me engage with the person behind the luggage counter at the airport or the individual mopping the floors at a bustling food court, she’s learning what I had to unlearn — but she's also learning something I never knew as a child: that we always have a choice.

That staying silent in the face of inequality is itself a choice. That recognition and respect aren't gifts to be bestowed from above, but basic human rights to be upheld by everyone, everyday.

There are no hierarchies in these exchanges, no subtle messages about worth being tied to occupation.

And I hope, as she weaves her way through life, she will be more attuned to the human-ness of those around her. These tokens, humble as they may be, are teaching her something profound about both art and worth.

They’re showing her that sometimes the most valuable creations aren’t those that fetch the highest prices or garner the most attention, but those that build bridges, that make someone feel seen, that transform a routine interaction into a moment of genuine human connection.

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The last time I visited India was in 2022 for 5 days after a decade-long gap. My mom had fallen and broken her pelvic bone. The drivers, the maids, the helpers were still there, getting verbally abused, serving in quietude because such was their destiny. Nothing had changed.

On my last day there, as I hugged the maid who has quietly been my mom’s right hand for the last four decades, I thanked her. Then, I asked why she never left. She said “I don’t know what your mom would do without me. She doesn’t realize how much she needs me. She isn’t a bad person, she’s just broken.”

I will always carry that revelation in my heart — how this woman, whom society deemed “untouchable,” whom circumstances had denied education and material comfort, possessed this wisdom and depth of human understanding.

While my mother saw someone dispensable, this woman held the profound understanding that she was, in fact, indispensable.

Not just for the physical labor she provided, but for the very humanity she brought into our home — a humanity that many of us, in our privileged blindness, had forgotten how to see.

This maid’s name is Rani — which translates to “The Queen.” And in all those years of watching her work in our home, none of us recognized the quiet royalty in her presence, the grace in her resilience, the wealth of spirit she carried within.

For Rani, true worth isn’t measured in rupees or square footage — it is in maintaining her light even when others tried to dim it.

It was so sad. It was so inspiring.

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I realized last year that my mission is to amplify the happiness quotient in my corner of the world through these small tokens of recognition. This is the legacy I hope to leave – not just a collection of handmade pieces, but a living example of how art can be a tool for human connection, for dignity, for seeing the extraordinary in the everyday.

This is why I pause, engage, connect.

Each little 2x4 piece of paper is a rebellion against invisibility.

Each personal note is a stand against the hierarchy of human worth I witnessed in my childhood.

Each interaction is a chance to heal not just others, but that quiet child who once pressed herself into wallpaper.

Each conversation is an attempt to acknowledge, appreciate and respect our self-worth beyond those job titles.

Because in the end, isn’t this how we change the world? In our own little corners, through our own little but persistent acts of kindness?

You don’t need watercolors or artistic skill—just the willingness to pause, to see, to acknowledge the humanity in every person you encounter.

I’d love to hear your own stories of connection, of being seen, of seeing others.

With gratitude for your presence,

Mansi.

P.S. These stories of connection and recognition now live at The Ripple Maker, where I am hoping to build a community committed to seeing and being seen, to healing our own invisibility by acknowledging it in others.