We're still trapped in the comparison Olympics with ‘Sharma ji ki beti’
While you’re worried about reaching your meeting on time, she has her sights set on Mars
There’s a Sharma ji ki beti in every neighbourhood—we’ve all grown up hearing about her. She cracked IIT, danced on stage for the Prime Minister, cleared UPSC, married early (but not too early), and still finds time to make her family a home-cooked meal every night. She’s a generational fever dream, weaponised at dinner table conversations and passed down like family heirlooms and high blood pressure.
She isn’t real. And yet, she haunts us all.
“My mom once compared me to a girl who won a NASA scholarship. I was in class 7. Funnily enough it ended up being fake news, but that didn’t deter my mother because ‘it could be possible’,” says Sreya M, 33, an advertising consultant based in New Delhi.
Welcome to comparison culture in India, where your success is like wedding buffet food—great until someone tells you the other counter had better options.
The never-ending competition
In Indian families, success is rarely personal—it’s a group project; a joint family investment. It reflects on your parents, your lineage, and the entire family WhatsApp group. Unlike Western individualism, where personal milestones are celebrated on their own terms, Indian success has always been measured relative to someone else’s child. If a Sharma ji ki beti is doing better, why aren’t you?
This dynamic fosters a comparison culture in India, where progress is measured against peers and relatives. The cycle of societal expectations and internalised pressure continues ever on.
It starts early, with academics. She’s the class brainiac, the Olympiad winner, the one who finished her mental math workbook over summer break. Then she turns into the ambitious career woman, moving abroad or climbing up the ladder while you’re still figuring out your taxes. Next, she’s the ideal wife who planned her entire wedding, organised all the office Excel sheets and got a raise in the process. And later, when everything else is done, she’s the woman who ‘ages gracefully’, never skipping her morning yoga while you’re just trying to survive the day.
The worst part? Even if you become Sharma ji ki beti, there will always be someone doing it better.
“I excitedly called my father and told him about getting the job I’d been working towards for months. While I got some pleasantries and congratulations, it quickly shifted to my mother talking about how her friend’s daughter is now living in the US and earns in dollars. It’s never enough, is it?” says Radhika Gupta*, 36, an assistant stylist in Goa.
Beyond Instagram
It’s tempting to blame social media for all our self-worth issues, but Sharma ji ki beti existed before Instagram, and she will survive long after it.
The real pressure doesn’t come from aesthetically curated reels (though that doesn’t help)—it comes from real-life social interactions you can’t block. It’s at family functions, where your ‘divorced’ status is dissected like a criminal case file. It’s at work, where someone is always outperforming you. It’s in friend circles, where life updates start feeling like LinkedIn success stories.
The phrase ‘Sharma ji ka beta’ (from which Sharma ji ki beti evolved) has long symbolised middle-class respectability. The ideal child was one who made their parents proud, kept aunties impressed, and ensured that ‘log kya kahenge’ was never a problem.
Why is comparison culture in India so intense? Because success has been about more than personal ambition—it’s about family pride, survival, and proving that you or your child is not the weak link in the lineage.
For decades, there were only a few ‘respectable’ ways to make it in life. It was (and largely remains) engineering, medicine, or a government job. More than careers, they were golden tickets to middle-class security. But with fewer seats than ambitious parents, competition was inevitable. Every child had to be smarter, harder-working, and more meritorious than the next.
“When opportunities were scarce, the only way to get ahead was to outperform everyone else. That generational anxiety still lingers,” says Noida-based psychologist Ashima Gaur Tutleja. Today, millions continue to compete for the same handful of coveted jobs, colleges, and social status.
Even now, with fancy start-ups, social media careers, and people making lakhs selling homemade pickles and chips, that old-school obsession with proving our worth in ‘traditional’ ways never really leaves us.
Escaping the trap
How do we unsubscribe from this never-ending competition? We probably can’t—not entirely. But we can refuse to let it dictate our self-worth.
The first step is realising that Sharma ji ki beti isn’t our rival—she’s just another person dealing with her own version of the pressure. Do you actually want what she has, or are you just convinced you should? Because let’s be real—some people thrive in high-pressure careers, while others do better with a cat nap after lunch before returning to the task list.
External forces are beyond our control, but what we can do, says Tutleja, is focus on our inner world and voice. Instead of treating life like a leaderboard, try to define success on your own terms. If happiness for you means a career that pays well enough without consuming your entire soul, or ending a relationship that feels unhealthy instead of chasing the ‘committed’ tag, then that should matter more than how impressive it looks to your mother’s best friend’s neighbour’s cousin.
Letting go of comparison culture in India isn’t about ignoring ambition—it’s about choosing whose approval actually matters to you. The next time someone brings up Sharma ji ki beti, try responding with: Good for her, not for me.
Because here’s the plot twist—even Sharma ji ki beti probably wishes she could be someone else.
*Name changed upon contributor’s request for anonymity.
