Compare all the way - My first article in Deccan Chronicle

Published in Hyd local paper - Deccan Chronicle in Teen Chronicle on Date: June 24, 1998.

Compare all the way.

I would like to know if comparisons can ever motivate anyone to produce better results. Every parent loves to compare their children's performance with that of others. Well, the grass is inevitably greener on the other side of the fence.

While sincerely seeking to make their children work harder, they not only compare academic abilities and other skills but also the way they conduct themselves, eat, sleep or brush their teeth. The worst part of the whole thing is that the parents do not make any consideration for the fact that one human being is naturally different from the other and their child is an unique individual in himself. Suppose the girl next door scores more than you, the same old story begins: why didn't you get a better score? I may want to get a better score but certainly not to boost someone else's ambition or to show another person down.

If I make an attempt to score better marks, it would be for the sole purpose of furthering my career. Getting better marks, to me, has nothing to do with putting over my best pal.
The perverse pleasure of excelling at someone else's expense does not allure me. I do not need the thought of humbling my friend to motivate me to score better marks.

The only thing I would feel if the maid's daughter did better than me in her exams is a significant amount of pride and a lot of happiness she had so well without all the luxuries that make life easier for me. But the way my mother puts it, it would make one think that I was the greatest ingrate on the face of this planet and the biggest moron to boot. Why can we not be genuinely happy that the maid's daughter has done well? Why bring in the comaparison that dulls the edge of pride and joy?
why not appreciate her in her own capacity and me in mine? Every teen goes through the process of being measured against someone else and inevitablycoming up short. Every household is sure to have witnessed at least one battle between an irate teen and an equally irate parent. Not only in matters pertaining to studies but even the very way you live is compared and criticised. All this will only serve to create a lot of bad blood between you and the person you are being compared to.
It may give you a psychological complex that will haunt you the rest of your life. So parents, give us a break and let us do the best we can, be it in studying or just in being us.

IF.....

If U can Dream and not make Dreams your Master;
If U can Think and not make thoughts your aim;

If U can keep your head,When all about you are losing theirs and blaming it onyou;
If U can trust yourself when all men doubt ,But make allowance for their doubting too;

If U can meet the two - imposed triumph and failurejust the same,Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If U can talk to crowds and keep ur virtue,Or, walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt U;If all men count with you, but none too much;

If U can wait and not be tired of waiting;If U can fill the unforgiving minuteWith sixty seconds' worth of distance run -Yours is the Earth and Everthing THAT'S In It,
And - Which is more - YOU'LL BE A MAN, my Son!

- Rudyard Kipling.

My Favorite Poem - The Road Not Taken

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

- Robert Frost.