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By:

Asha Tripathi

14 April 2025 at 1:35:28 pm

Stop Comparing, Start Growing

Success does not grow in comparison; it grows in focus. Over the years, women have made significant strides in every sphere of life. From managing homes to leading organisations, from nurturing families to building successful careers, women have proved that strength and resilience are deeply rooted in their nature. Financial independence has become a significant milestone for many women today, bringing with it confidence, dignity, and the freedom to shape one’s own destiny. However, along...

Stop Comparing, Start Growing

Success does not grow in comparison; it grows in focus. Over the years, women have made significant strides in every sphere of life. From managing homes to leading organisations, from nurturing families to building successful careers, women have proved that strength and resilience are deeply rooted in their nature. Financial independence has become a significant milestone for many women today, bringing with it confidence, dignity, and the freedom to shape one’s own destiny. However, along with growth has come another silent challenge — the tendency to constantly observe, compare, and sometimes even compete with the journeys of others. But a crucial question arises: Is it necessary to track the growth of others in order to grow ourselves? From my personal experience of more than two decades as an entrepreneur, I have realised something very powerful — true growth begins the moment we stop looking sideways and start looking within. A Small Beginning I had a flourishing career of teaching abroad, but when I restarted my career after moving back to India, my beginning was extremely small. My very first assignment was a simple home tuition for a single student, and the amount I earned was meagre. There was nothing glamorous about it. No recognition, no large batches, no big earnings. Just one student and one opportunity. But instead of worrying about how others were doing, how many students they had, or how much they were earning, I made a conscious decision—my only focus would be on improving myself. I focused on teaching better, preparing better, and becoming more disciplined and consistent. And slowly, without even realising it, things began to grow. One student became two, two became a small group, and gradually, over the years, the work expanded beyond what I had initially imagined. Looking back today, I can confidently say that the growth did not happen because I competed with others. It happened because I competed with myself yesterday. Comparison Creates Noise When we keep watching others' journeys too closely, we unknowingly divert our own energy. Comparison creates unnecessary noise in our minds. It brings doubts, insecurities, and sometimes even negativity. Instead of walking our own path with clarity, we start questioning our speed, our direction, and our worth. True success grows through focus, not comparison. Every woman has her own story, her own pace, and her own struggles that others may never see. The path of one person can never be identical to another's. So comparing journeys is like comparing two different rivers flowing towards the same ocean — each with its own route, its own curves, and its own rhythm. As women, we already carry many responsibilities. We balance emotions, relationships, work, and society's expectations. In such a life, the last thing we need is the burden of comparison with one another. Instead, what we truly need is support for each other. When women encourage women, something extraordinary happens. Confidence grows. Opportunities multiply. Strength becomes collective rather than individual. There is enough space in the world for every woman to create her own identity. Each of us can build our own niche without stepping on someone else's path. Choose Encouragement Envy weakens us, but encouragement empowers us. Rather than questioning how someone else is progressing, we can ask a more meaningful question: "How can I grow a little better than I was yesterday?" Lift As You Rise Today, after twenty years of experience, the most valuable lesson I have learned is simple yet profound — focus on your own work with honesty and dedication, and success will quietly follow you. We, women, are capable, resilient, and creative. We do not need to pull each other down or compete in unhealthy ways. Instead, we can lift each other up while building our own dreams. Because when one woman rises, she does not rise alone. She inspires many others to believe that they can rise, too. And perhaps that is the most beautiful form of success. (The writer is a tutor based in Thane. Views personal.)

Metronome of the Gods

19-year-old Devvrat Rekhe has revived one of Hinduism’s most forbidding oral rituals, proving Bharat’s ancient faith has not yet lost its voice in an age of consumption and constant noise.

Earlier this week, as the winter light thinned over the Ghats of Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi paused from his usual duties of state to applaud a feat that belonged to a far older civilisation than the modern republic he governs. Modi, himself the Member of Parliament from the holy city, hailed the achievement of a 19-year-old Maharashtra-born Vedic scholar, Devvrat Mahesh Rekhe, who had just completed one of the most exacting oral disciplines known to Hindu tradition: the Dandakrama Parayanam of the Shukla Yajurveda, Madhyandina Shakha.


For fifty unbroken days from October 2 to November 30, the youthful Rekhe had recited nearly 2,000 mantras in a style so intricate and physically demanding that it has been attempted only a handful of times in recorded history. Scholars say that the Dandakrama, one of the eight vikrutis (complex recitational permutations of Vedic texts), tests not merely memory but breath control, tonal precision and absolute mental steadiness. A single slip breaks the chain. Across the centuries, very few have been judged equal to it.


That this ascetic marathon unfolded in modern Varanasi amid traffic horns and the rumble of mass tourism only deepened its improbability. The last known Dandakrama Parayanam in India was performed two centuries ago in Nashik. Now, against all odds, the ancient cadence has returned to Kashi.


The Vedas, composed more than three millennia ago, predate writing in the Indian subcontinent. They survived not by inscription but by sound, carried from teacher to student through unbroken chains of oral transmission, protected by elaborate mnemonic systems. Among these systems, the vikrutis function as intellectual fortresses. By rearranging word orders and reversals in mathematically precise ways, they ensure both perfect recall and protection against textual corruption.


Dandakrama is among the most severe of these fortifications. It demands continuous, errorless recitation in a highly regimented acoustic sequence, often accompanied by bodily austerities. Scholars at the Sringeri Sharada Peetham, the most prestigious of India’s classical monastic seats, certified Rekhe’s performance as flawless and “completed in the shortest known span.”


Rekhe was later honoured with a ceremonial procession through Varanasi and a gold ornament from the Jagadguru Shankaracharya of Sringeri, the spectacle fused two Indias: one of uninterrupted sacred tradition, the other of televised reverence and political symbolism.


Born in Maharashtra’s Ahilyanagar district into a modest Brahmin household, Rekhe’s father, Mahesh Chandrakant Rekhe, is both a respected scholar and his first guru. The boy began reciting mantras at the age of five. By nineteen, he had memorised the entire Shukla Yajurveda in its Madhyandina recension which, on its terms, is a feat rare enough.


Rekhe’s life more closely resembles that of a medieval gurukul student than a contemporary Indian teenager. He avoids mobile phones and social media. His days are structured around recitation, ritual precision and austere routine. Teachers describe his temperament as unusually focused, and his absorption near-total.


Rekhe’s Dandakrama Parayanam was conducted at the Vallabharam Shaligram Sangveda Vidyalaya near Ramghat, but it unfolded under national gaze. Over 500 Vedic students, musicians and devotees joined the celebratory procession that followed. He was presented with a golden bracelet worth Rs. 5 lakh and an honorarium of Rs. 1,11,116 in a modern ritual of valuation layered upon an ancient act of renunciation.


To admirers, Rekhe’s stupendous achievement is proof that India’s oral civilisation remains intact. When asked about the purpose of his undertaking, Rekhe’s said it was “for Sanatan Dharma…that the world may be blessed, Sanatan Dharma may progress, and our nation Bharat may become Vishwaguru.”


India often boasts of being an ancient civilisation, but antiquity survives only through repeated acts of renewal. The Vedas, unlike monuments, cannot be conserved by the modern state. They must be inhabited by human memory, breath and errorless endurance. Each generation, in effect, must rebuild them.


Dandakrama Parayanam is among the steepest of these rebuildings. The fact that a teenager could perform it in the age of algorithmic distraction unsettles standard assumptions about modernity’s erasures. It suggests that the old grammar of discipline still finds apprentices.


Two hundred years after it last echoed in public memory, the Dandakrama has once more passed through human breath in Kashi. Civilisations rarely announce their survival so audibly. But Devvrat Rekhe did that and much more. 


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