It is but serendipity that when I wanted to write something on the eve of the coming results, (expected on 15/16 from what I have heard) I found this little something I wrote on May 23, 2022.

It was my season of waiting.

I had my interview on 5th April, 2022–the very first day of interviews for CSE 2021. The time between 6th April and 30th May when results were finally announced, were all about the restlesness of waiting.

Here’s what I had written:

“To wait is one of the most grueling of tasks. We have to wait very often, for things little or large — an online delivery, a booked cab, vacations, examination results, the so-called joys of the weekend, or for joy, love, and success.

If I look back at life, I think I have been waiting for so much for so long. Waiting numbs you, blunts the edges of your life, you have to learn to temper all your emotions to get through the endlessness of it.

However, the waiting of the last few months have been most grueling. Importantly, because apart from the act of waiting intertwined with hopes and wishes, I have had nothing concrete to hold in my hands. Nothing to look forward to in the morning, nothing to plan for while sleeping.

I have held on to my friends, conversations, tea, coffee, evenings, writing, music, walking, gymming, ranting and just walking through this maze trying to numb the exasperation of waiting.

As also telling myself to live in this moment, to be here, and now.

Maybe when this ends, it will all make sense. I earnestly want it to.“

The waiting ended & yes, everything makes sense. Our lives will make sense in hindsight and that must give courage to face whatever it offers to us in the present.

The waiting, in hindsight, was worth everything. The waiting, I feel was less about the outcome of the results, and more the quest for happiness and peace. And as much as one would want to intertwine success at this exam and happiness, they are separate.

This exam changes your life and it does not. To what degree and how much, in ways good or bad—– you decide. But as you wait for an outcome that seems like a lifechanging one, let me give you a larger perspective, with the advantage of nothing but a couple of years beyond the completion of the gruelling waiting.

Let me emphasise at the onset, that till the point one is devoted to the dream of Civil Services, it is worth giving one’s everything to. There should be no regrets left about what more we could have done, every bit of our living should go to it.

I write this only after giving most of my 20s to this exam and I only have this perspective after going through the fire of this preparation. If somebody would have tried to explain this “bigger perspective” to me when I started, I would happily ignore them. That was my naivety, as also my hunger for my dream.

If anything, what I write ahead should give you the perspective to not let this exam ever take a toll on your mental health, your life did not start here, it does not end here. This isn’t bigger than your life, and while we give it our all, it’s important to remember there is a whole, wide world waiting for you, within the services or beyond it.

tū shāhīñ hai parvāz hai kaam terā

tere sāmne āsmāñ aur bhī haiñ

You are a falcon, flight is your vocation:

You have other skies stretching out before you

-Allama Iqbal

This exam has always been sold to us as “larger than life”. Cracking this one exam is seen as the key to a life which is celebrated across the country. It is seen as an unmatched profession which gives you an opportunity to create massive impact on society. We give our days an nights, weeks, months and years to it. We keep ourselves away from everything that we love and enjoy to ‘save time’ and give to this exam. We ignore our health and keep every thing for after ‘pre, mains or interview’. Sitting on our chairs we imagine the moment results will be out and we get to talk of the struggles we have been to.

When the results were about to come in 2022, we were so restless as a family that my brother planned an impromptu trip to Rishikesh. But I was adamant we need to be back by 30th May, mid-day because results were said to be announced that day and I wanted to be home in case the media swarms my house. (LOL.)

I share this to tell you how most of us think about the outcome of this exam. We could have started for whatever reason, but in preparing we aspire for these little things that seems to enrich the lives of those beyond the wall of success. We start to believe how probably these toppers giving these interviews are living the “heights of joy and success”. The truth, albeit is very different.

Civil Services enables you to do constructive things for the world around you by virtue of your job and knowledge. You can ensure the social welfare schemes are run well, crime goes down or the machinery of GST runs without hiccups or that diplomacy keeps taking the country to newer heights.

Unlike the running headlines of “bureaucracy being a dry job” symbolising “deprivation of aspiration”, it is actually the heights of aspiration that a middle class family can nurture. And like most mainstream paths of upward social mobility it goes through the route of education and knowledge.

Even if one has not grown up knowing an iota of ethics you are forced to educate yourself in it. Even if most of us have grown up with the ignorance of how the map of northeast looks like, we are compelled to know both the physical and social geography of the region. This exam is unmatched in what it expects of us, and what it does to us. People who have prepared for Civil Services will always stand out by virtue of the multidimensional knowledge that they will hold.

And as a job, purely as a job, being in the services will always give you the basic necessities of life. Roti, Kapda, Makaan (and Internet bhi ho jaega) will be sorted and you will not have much to complain about. Most services are intellectually stimulating and have diverse opportunities within the department that will offer a mix of the use of intellect, reading, knowledge as well as the ability to execute things or to “keep the wheel of this country running”.

But can an exam change your life? Deep down we know the answer.

Some of us will find our name in the list with the desired rank, some will not be content with the rank, some will not find their name in the list.

But is this the life altering moment? For a few of us it will be, but for most of us, in no time we will realise that this is not a life altering moment.

Sometimes, an anticipated moment seems the greatest thing that can happen to us because we have put so much of our energies in the anticipation of it. Like waiting for the things we want, whether it is an exam result, or finding love and companionship, finding success, meeting a celebrity you have looked up to, going to a great concert, reaching the peak of a mountain you have always planned to trek to.

When the moment unravells infront of us however, it loses it’s midas touch. The golden touch was the waiting, the yearning, the fire of desire for it, it will often be lost. And it will only be lost for the things that are not the most life altering moments of your life.

The things that are meant for you, destined for you, handcrafted for you, find you in the most unexpected of ways. You could have anticipated for this too, but on finding it, you will realise the midas touch is never lost, it only becomes eternal with every passing day. That’s yours to hold on to. And that which is so valuable, eternal and irreplaceable, cannot be a job.

As much significance this job holds for the country or this society, this is just a reminder, that this exams gets us a job and that is it. Since we have read about the Thatheras of Jandiala Guru, Punjab who make traditional brass and copper utensils (UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage), this company called P-Tal has really enamoured me recently. What this company and it’s founders are doing for an otherwise dying tradition is remarkable. Reviving it and generating good jobs along with it, is it not as virtuous as serving the country through the services? I think it is!

Yet we think this exam is our world. I do not blame us, I also think it is necessary to be able to give it our all. My only nudge is we should also consciously get rid of the idea once we transcend out of it, or have spent considerable years in the process.

When results were announced on 30th may 2022, I didn’t feel happy. I was angry with myself, I saw the results as my inability to put in more effort, ignoring in the moment everything I struggled against to get there. Why could I not do more, why I could I not love the process of this exam more than anything else, I was deeply upset. I cried for hours, and I only got back to normal when I saw my family celebrating and I felt it meant a lot to them.

A senior had called and said something beautiful that day “List me aana tumhari mehnat hain, rank tumhari kismat”. “You have done well, please enjoy”. It gave me perspective. I will only add on to it by saying that qualifying or even trying our best at this exam is our hardwork, the outcome is destiny.

Did the exam result change my life? Yes and No.

It did not because it did nothing to my inner world. It was still in the chaos of the past, it was still attending to unhealed wounds and I did not have the capacity to feel joy, I could simply not feel happy. I used to temporarily find normalcy around people, I went back home to Bihar and met all my grandparents and family after years, celebrated my birthday with my whole village and yet when I would go to sleep I would feel empty and lonely. If our hearts and souls are a tumbler full of our feelings, thoughts and emotions, what can qualifying an exam add to it?

Things only began to change when the “actual job” started, when training began and the regular features of my life changed. I was around wonderful people, there was learning, sports, travelling, togetherness. And it were these details of my life that changed it, not the fact “that I was an officer” at that time.

Ofcourse it opened up the vista for it, the exams enabled this life for me, but so can any job. If this exam does not work out for you tomorrow, you are probably just another application/interview/degree/ experience away from building the life you have imagined for yourself.

Those who glamourise the job and the exam never mention the fact that the essentials of a happy life can be met anywhere and everywhere. Without doubt, it will take a lot of courage, will-power and effort to recreate our lives because we had directed all our energies to this exam. But there are unending doors and windows to be peeped from, knocked on, and walked over to build the lives of our dreams.

And those of us who will find our way into the services, finding success at this exam, will also begin on another adventure of finding ourselves, of living a purposeful life, and I think that is the most challenging of tasks.

Even in success, somebody will not get a rank of their choice, or the cadre of their choice, somebody’s selection will coincide with a breakup, somebody will sulk in homesickness, somebody will leave behind a lovely workplace to enter the services, somebody will leave behind their beautiful spouse or kids to go for training, or the city they have grown up in, even in success at this exam there will not be an ‘absoluteness of joy’, and that is life.

I believe with all conviction that anybody reading this blog today has the ability to create a good material life for themseleves which will have the essentials of roti, kapda, makaan. But beyond it is being able to live peacefully, with the world outside and with the world inside-that’s the real deal.

Untying the knots of the years that have gone by, creating space for good things to fill your life with. Living with gratitude, being able to live in the present moment, dealing with our fragile mortalities, acknowledging when we are hurting, taking care of somebody else who is hurting, making people feel seen, loving them as our own, offering compassion instead of spitefulness, living with empathy rather than arrogance, keeping alive the curiosity of a child, living with hope—these and more are also the real life challenges that will take a lot of inner work, at all times.

And I hope we do well in that exam of life.

Finally, let me congratulate in advance, the people who will make it as well as those who will not. Amongst us, the successful ones will only be those who will take both this success and failure as a part of life, sit lightly on the chairs that come to us and use the coming moment of truth as a step to create a more meaningful life for ourselves.

Ending this with lines of the hindi poet, Shivmangal Singh Suman:

क्या हार में क्या जीत में 
किंचित नहीं भयभीत मैं 
संघर्ष पथ पर जो मिले यह भी सही वह भी सही 

Until next time,

Preeti