High in the mountains there was a small shrine where, every single evening, a single lamp was lit. No one ever saw who lit it.

Travellers who crossed the cold pass at night came to depend on that small golden glow. On the worst nights, when the snow blew sideways and a person could lose the path and freeze, the lamp in the window was the difference between life and death. Year after year it burned, never once dark.

A young pilgrim named Anant grew curious. He decided to stay awake and find out who tended it. He hid behind a rock as the sky went dark.

At last a figure came: an old woman, bent and slow, carrying oil up the steep path. Her hands shook with the cold. She trimmed the wick, cleaned the glass, filled the lamp, and lit it. She bowed once to the little flame, her lips moving in a quiet prayer. Then she gathered her shawl and turned to leave.

Anant stepped out. "Mother," he said, "I have watched you. This climb is terrible, and you are old. Who pays you? Who even thanks you? The travellers don't know your name."

The old woman looked at him kindly. "No one pays me," she said. "And I do not want them to. If I lit the lamp for thanks, then on a night when no one thanked me, I might stop lighting it — and that would be the very night a traveller needed it most."

She nodded toward the steady flame. "I keep my body climbing, my words gentle, and my heart quiet, for one reason only: because it is right to light the way. The moment I wanted something back, the lamp would start to flicker."

Anant understood. The hardest disciplines — the cold climb, the careful hands, the patient prayer — were not the heavy part. The light part was this: she asked for nothing.

He carried oil up the mountain with her after that, and never once put his name on the deed. The lamp, lit with faith and wanting nothing, burned brightest of all.