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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.)

Veiled Threats

The Delhi blast and the arrests that followed have forced India to confront an unsettling evolution in its terror landscape. Among those now in custody is Dr. Shaheen Shahid, a Lucknow-based physician who, investigators say was not merely a sympathiser but an organiser tasked by the Pakistan-backed Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) to build its women’s wing in India, the Jamaatul Mominat. Her alleged mission was to recruit, indoctrinate and mobilise women, particularly educated students, for coordinated terror attacks across the country. It was designed to serve both as a recruitment hub and a moral shield.


Dr. Shaheen’s interrogation has exposed what security officials describe as a professionalised network of radicalised doctors including main suspects Dr. Umar Un Nabi, Dr. Muzammil Ahmad Ganaie and Dr. Adeel Majeed, who had been stockpiling ammonium-nitrate explosives for two years to be used for coordinated attacks across India. This mark a chilling new chapter in India’s jihadist story wherein the frontline of extremism has shifted from jungle camps to research labs, and from madrassas to medical colleges.


Shaheen’s arrest reveals how women are becoming the new face of jihad in India. For years, women were portrayed as victims or passive enablers of extremism. Dr. Shaheen’s case upends that assumption. During questioning, Dr. Shaheen acknowledged that she had maintained direct contact with Sadia Azhar, sister of JeM chief Masood Azhar, and had worked alongside her brother Parvez Ansari to expand the group’s reach within India. Her assignment, she reportedly told investigators, was to identify, indoctrinate and mobilise women - particularly students abroad - to support the organisation’s objectives.


That a doctor, trained to preserve life, should conspire to destroy it marks a grim inversion of professional ethics. Yet Dr. Shaheen’s case is not an anomaly. It represents a shift in jihadist strategy which is from recruiting alienated youths in conflict zones to cultivating educated professionals capable of operating in plain sight. The Jaish leadership, facing tighter border surveillance and international scrutiny, appears to have realised that the future of its network lies not in the mountains of Pakistan but in the classrooms and clinics of India.


Women’s involvement, by design, provides cover and social respectability, along with plausible deniability and access to spaces from which male operatives are barred. This was in evidence during the Delhi riots as well. Dr. Shaheen and her circle were not mere couriers or sympathisers but educated actors capable of producing explosives, encrypting communications and sustaining clandestine cells for years.


The ideological grooming of such professionals has not happened in isolation. It has thrived in a permissive environment where any discussion of radicalisation risks being dismissed as bigotry. India’s self-styled progressives, quick to romanticise Muslim intellectuals and reformers, have often chosen to look away when confronted with evidence of extremist influence within educated circles. The transformation of a doctor, especially a lady, into a lethal terror operative thus represents not only a security failure but a moral one.

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