Degrees of comparison

When a child is born, its features are compared to those of its parents. It takes a few months for the child’s features to take shape before one could convincingly say the child has taken after its mother or father.

As soon as the comparison of the child’s looks gets settled, folks in the family start comparing the child’s activities to that of his father in the case of a boy child or to her mother in the case of a girl child. You can listen to all of them saying, “He is exactly like his dad, you see.” The adage “Like father, like son” will be on everyone’s lips…This is the period of comparison of similarities, or to put it biologically, it is the comparison of the genes.

As the child grows up and becomes too naughty to everyone’s dislike, the “comparison of differences” stage begins and you can now listen to people saying “his father was quiet and sweet as a child, but this chap is totally the opposite”. The comparison cycle then graduates and enters into the child’s school. When young parents of the current generation attend PTA (Parent Teacher Association) meetings in their ward’s school, the most common advice that is dished out to them is, “Do not compare your child to another …” and so on. In one of the PTA meets I attended recently in my son’s school, I saw a young mother, with insurmountable grief on her face, asking the teacher, “My son and his classmate Prasad are neighbours and both study together, but my son always scores very low marks.” The teacher was prompt enough to give out the same advice: “Do not compare your child…..”

This set me thinking. Why are comparisons made? I tried hard to think it over before I finally convinced myself that comparisons could only be used as a tool for improvement over a benchmark or references with which one’s performance is compared. Comparisons are made across generations. During his heyday, Sunil Gavaskar was compared to Don Bradman, and imagine the agony of Sachin Tendulkar whose performance was compared to many of his contemporaries such as Lara and Kallis.

When comparisons cut across generations, it becomes all the more baffling. Parents often tell their children: “During our day things were not simple as it is these days; we had to come up the hard way.” This definitely will irritate the smart phone-wielding kids of the current generation.

As I was pondering over this, I realised it was time for the 9 p.m. news and tuned into a certain channel, only to find that its viewership figures were being compared with that of another channel. The comparison business was evidently all-pervasive. I switched off the TV and as I entered the study room, I could see my wife sitting with my son’s grammar book.

She was explaining the three degrees of comparison: “Positive, Comparative and Superlative”. I only wished everything including the degrees of comparison always stays “Positive”!

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