Thoughts are pivotal

If there was one resolution Rehana (name changed) would give her life for, it was that her son, Guddu would not tread the muddied realm of nautch girls. Some years ago, I had interviewed Rehana, once a nautch girl of Chaturbhuj Sthan, a red light area in Muzaffarpur in Bihar. Rehana’s past was a blur. The foggy memories she had about a certain aunt in Benaras were just that — foggy. Memory served her right from Chaturbhuj Sthan where she grew up in a milieu of shame, hatred, abuse, contempt and connivance — all that coalesced to make her a much-in-demand nartaki (dancer) in the 1980s.

When Guddu was born, the only thing that dominated her thoughts was how to get him out of the morass. She would see how children born to her ilk grew up to be abusive vagabonds, often becoming pimps of their own mothers and sisters. Nothing of the sort for Guddu, Rehana resolved. She had told me something I would never forget, “Lohe ko marora jaa sakta hai, par lohe ko sirf apna jung mar sakta hai. Aadmi ko koi aur nahin, apna khayal marta hai” (You can bend iron, but only its own rust can destroy it.

Only one’s thoughts can make or mar a person.) The noble thought propelled action and she sent Guddu away to a boarding school, imploring one of her benevolent “clients” to act as his guardian. She did not want her identity to make her son an object of ridicule. Twenty years trapezed past. Guddu, an engineering graduate, now works in a premier petroleum company. Rehana, in her sixties, stays with him.

As it precedes action, thought has great creative power which can be used for good or ill. Rehana illustrates that irrespective of place or pelf, all that you accomplish or fail to accomplish with your life is the direct result of your thoughts. Life is too precious to dawdle away. As British writer, James Allen said, “You are today where your thoughts have brought you. You will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.”