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...

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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.)

Selective Sacrilege

Correspondent
Jan 1
3 min read

Kerala’s biennale outrage exposes how artistic freedom is invoked selectively and cloaked in liberal sophistry.

Good art provokes. Bad arguments excuse. The controversy around artist Tom Vattakuzhy’s reappearance at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale where he reworked the iconic Last Supper painting to replace Christ with a half-naked dancer flanked by nuns has produced both. The artist and the defenders of his painting have reached reflexively for the vocabulary of modern piety – namely that interpretation is ‘subjective’ and that his intent was benign and that art must be free. The objectors, notably the Syro-Malabar Church and Catholic associations, are speaking the older language of reverence and hurt. Between them stands Kerala’s self-image as India’s most literate, most liberal state, which is now revealed as a place where freedom is proclaimed loudly and applied unevenly.

The painting had sparked outrage in 2016 when a leading Malayalam literary magazine withdrew it after protests. The Biennale’s organisers insist the venue was closed temporarily only for crowd control. The artist says he intended no offence and sees Christ in suffering humanity. But art does not float free of context. A motif that believers hold sacred, when reassembled to shock, cannot plead innocence simply because the shock was anticipated and rehearsed.

Nor is this merely a Christian quarrel. Kerala’s cultural politics have long treated Hindu iconography as fair game to be parodied in theatre, caricatured in cartoons and inverted in gallery pieces often to applause as the ruling Communists and the Congress party bosses turned a blind eye to such antics. And yet, when a Christian symbol is reimagined with erotic charge, the tone noticeably shifts. Vattakuzhy’s painting has triggered a temporary police closure of the festival.

The larger point here is that liberals respond with their favourite manoeuvre of ‘moral equivalence.’ All religions, they argue, have been mocked; therefore no religion may complain. This syllogism collapses under scrutiny. In practice, not all faiths are treated alike by cultural gatekeepers. Hinduism, which is diffuse and lacking a single clerical veto, has become the default canvas for transgression. Christianity, with institutions capable of sustained protest, is tested more cautiously; Islam, hedged by fear and law, is often avoided altogether. To insist these asymmetries do not exist is to confuse theory with practice. Freedom that operates by calculating who will object least is not freedom; it is opportunism.

There is a second equivalence at work: between criticism and ridicule. Art that interrogates power, exposes hypocrisy or reconsiders myth can be bracing. Art that swaps sacred figures for sexualised bodies to signal daring is a thinner achievement. The Biennale’s defenders say interpretation lies with the viewer. True enough. But artists, curators and institutions choose which interpretations they invite and which communities they repeatedly dare to absorb the blow in the name of progress.

Kerala’s liberals like to imagine themselves besieged by prudery. In fact, they enjoy a long indulgence. They speak for pluralism while narrowing its terms; they preach tolerance while demanding that some believers practise it more than others. When Hindus protest, they are scolded for majoritarian fragility. When Christians protest, the system pauses and reassures. When Muslims are involved, silence often prevails. This is not secularism. It is a hierarchy of sensitivity.

None of this requires censorship. The case for artistic freedom remains strong precisely because faiths are not museums. Symbols live, meanings shift. But freedom earns its legitimacy by consistency. If ridicule is allowed, allow it without favour. If hurt matters, let it matter across the board. And if institutions insist on provocation, they should at least drop the pretence that they are innocent bystanders to its consequences.

Kerala’s Biennale aspires to be global. Global standards cut both ways. In mature cultural spaces, artists defend their work on its merits, not by outsourcing accountability to abstraction. Curators accept that daring choices bring real disagreement. And liberals resist the lazy comfort of false equivalence. Until then, the state’s art wars will keep rehearsing the same drama of selective sacrilege dressed up as courage.

Stop Comparing, Start Growing

Selective Sacrilege

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