What you think, you ultimately become
When I signed the movie Aashiqui, my intent was to nurture the idea of ‘girl independence’, but it ended up doing so much more. It propagated the feeling of love. And for small creatures, such as us, the vastness is bearable only through love. After all, where there is love there is life.
Since then, through a series of life and mind altering incidences, however pleasurable or dastardly painful, I ended up becoming that. Compassion, forgiveness and empathy, became my living traits, and unabashedly so. My childhood dream came true.
Unlike the common belief that you cannot, I have found that you can weave the tapestry of your life. It is a common misconception, a rather hedonistic one, which has you doubting yourself. Bubbles of a life which is half-lived cocoons us in. Hence, we face the uncertainty head-on that tells us when we aspire for greatness—we may or may not become great.
It is said that your effort carves your path, while your karma dictates the end. I say even your karma, loosely speaking a result from past actions can be manoeuvred. Though you cannot undo the past there are means to let it go. But even before that you need to ask yourself what are the measures you are adapting for your wish to become an in-your-face reality.
Recently the demise of Ratan Tata, the jewel of India, was headline news. A Parsi friend of mine—a neighbour of his in Colaba—kept me updated with videos of the slowly moving cars carrying his casket on its way to the NCPA.
“We Parsis don’t throw the dead body to the crows anymore… Thank god!...” Shernaz quipped.
An old practice where Parsis did not cremate but left their bodies in a Tower of Silence (Dakhma), where the body can be naturally decomposed, fed to vultures, and the forces of nature. While I thought—the original practice called 'Dokhmenashini'—the process was remarkably basic and ‘nature sustainable’, she didn’t agree.
My argument that the concept of “I” or “my body” is actually an illusion, and the Parsis came closest to the three ‘R’s of sustainability—reduce, reuse, recycle. Protecting your planet starts with you, with each one of us. But my argument was unpalatable to her.
Every action, no matter how small, contributes to the larger good of nature conservation. But like the adage, “Change starts from within”, I founded the Anu Aggarwal Foundation to tackle stress and mental health. I figured that just propagation, raising a red flag, protests, etc. are good, but not enough. Slow down the barrage of millions of thoughts, and access the positive components that exist therein. Know thyself. Live in the moment. Self-care means caring for the environment. A saint and a sinner, rich or poor, all breathe the same air. Follow Jamshedji Tata’s original vision: “the purpose of an enterprise is to serve the community.” I feel it a blessing that I can be, in however big or small a way, a torch bearer to that legacy.
Anu Aggarwal
Actor, speaker, yogi and author
Instagram: @anusualanu