I was actually on the pot and going through my daily ritual of reading the Delhi Times: I feel this particular segment must and must be read only during this hour and no other hour.

So I happened to chance upon this half page advert on some motivational Speaker called Sandeep Maheshwari-the big story is that apparently he is now lecturing in Delhi and its a 2 hour thing every sat and Sunday and one needs to book one's seat immediately if one wishes to sit through one such sessions....

It caught my eye, I entered office and checked out his website...he is a young guy who claims that once after his classes your life will change or atleast the way you look at it...naturally it is implied that you must have a certain mental disposition, being too critical or cynical being neither of the requirements.

I have enrolled myself for one such momentous lesson in the coming month of April and before that the registration process required me to define success in 200 words: I wrote: "Success is being happy and secure about yourself. There is a fire within that pushes you to achieve your goals, success is the pursuit of such a fire."

Now in the meanwhile I downloaded a free e-book from his website- I am hoping his lecture will be different because otherwise I would be forced to leave-however there is a point that I found almost incomplete...

Among the numerous things that one can do to become successful, the biggest thing is to be able to think like a child- ofcourse there are these other one word triggers like 'love', 'live', 'learn', hope', and interestingly Help'...and along side this it read "its a wonderful way to move up together by making the journey a pleasure."

I think to this its very necessary to add 'Forget'...I think its necessary that when we help we do not do so with the aim to get something in return...one must learn to help however one can and move on. Expectations often kill the cat and makes one unhappy- it arises directly from so many interconnected triggers like having faith, and believing that what goes around will sooner than later, come around.!

Now this month of March 2012 is a cruel one. It is playing tricks on my mind and I am often caught in a chaotic haze of rather diabolical choices-for instance go back to crossing the Rubicon or staying put in this job and working it slowly and steadily-the problem with the latter option is I do not know If I'll ever have the time...what if during the course I find a better job, naturally I will leave to join that but then I would not have the kind of time I do here.

On the other hand if i decide this year then I am not sure if it would be a wasted shot? I mean I may have the time but relying solely on previous years knowledge gathered with out any brush ups not sure.

The again I wonder how much time is actually needed...I mean there is only so much that you can study. But I could prepare my Psychology and Sociology notes chapter wise.

Plus I feel that perhaps this year I should just let things lie-my boyfriend is giving it, and it should only be him and not the both of us.

By the way I think much of my confusion has to do with my day to day interaction-I always meet people who always say diametrically opposed things- yesterday happened to be one such day when I met GURU-he had his interview yesterday and it went off well as far as I can see...he did not remember Oedipal Complex nor Penis Envy-when he narrated the tale of his interview I wished there was a way to directly step into the interview...but I must be mature and I understand its always cumulative...so his hard work and efforts have paid off...hopefully.

He told me of a guy who studied for 2 months before the prelims and managed to get a rank. the rider was he was from IIT and I am from DU-a pure humanities student with a tasteful aversion to numbers and anything that claims to be a quantitative test of aptitude...

I think post this post I will stick to my original decision of aiming for it in 2013.

I am just caught because it feels so near and yet its starngely elusive.

But I do have a plan on how to ensure that the next time round I must clear the Prelims-I need to sit down with previous year question papers in a simulated environment and attempt atleast 6 previous year papers and do an objective analysis of my weak areas and strong areas. Once I have this, the next step is to go about strengthening the weak areas and practicing the strong ones as well.

Finally for the prelims of 2013-out of a 100 attempting 75 with a buffer of 10 guess based questions for Paper 1 and out 80 questions 75 minimum for CSAT with maximum scope of 1-2 guesses must be worked towards.

So as of now I work towards preparing my notes for the optionals and practicing Quants.

The key is :::....stay tuned!

So now its been a week since I have been resolving every evening that tomorrow is going to be a new day and suddenly I will be filled with a certain insurmountable energy to chalk out every single hour of my day-that tomorrow is just never arriving.

My suspicion tells me that the onus is on me' i  need to make that move where I say I am taking charge. But it all appears so impossible when I look at it right now. I mean imagine I have no idea by how much I did not make through the first round. Then there are evolved souls who say all that does not matter, stop thinking of your past, just give it all you have...then I wonder is 'all that I have' good enough this time?

Sometimes I feel I have too much on my plate, one is my job which may I please inform, I really enjoy. Second is my agenda for this examination and thirdly my squash lessons which I also enjoy. Naturally these are peppered from time to time with concerns on whether or not I should sit for the exam? Will my boyfriend crack it? Will I be with him? Would I marry him? and a strange series of the following realizations:

My parents are some of the coolest ones around.

This time that I have where I practically have no concerns will never come back to me

My parents are becoming old.

My sister is still a bit young.

I want to decorate my house and host some dinner parties

I want to be known for some meaningful work even in a small way.

So as of now till I touch 30, I must make all efforts to do what I believe will make me happier.  If I haven't

done it by then , well then I wont do it for some time to come! or Not maybe....!!









done it by then 

Today my boss took the credit for all the hard work that I had done and you know what I could not even care less-to the powers that may be I did not feel it important enough to even worry much about it. All that struck me was what I had been suspecting for some time now had been confirmed. My boss is an asshole and may god make his existence only slightly more respectful.

I finally got the book- "India's struggle for Independence-Bipan Chandra" I realized that as per the UPSC syllabus this is perhaps more relevant from the exams point of view than "India Since Independence" so I have started on this.

Now I told myself that only if I am able to finish a single chapter in this voluminous text will I sit and watch a film later-I have been unable to stick to this promise. I am watching the film and finished only half of the introduction.

Must improve accountability to myself.

I have now decided to take some responsibility and write this down. It is not going to be a regular blog, I have tried it before and have met with failure. Neither am I promising it to be weekly, but perhaps monthly. I am going to write this as a run up to my third attempt at the UPSC - what one such Professor at JNU said about: the Unpredictable Public Service Commission.

For the uninitiated, this is one of the harder nuts to crack as and when anybody in their 20's decides to take it up. I say it out of experience, and mainly because this examination refuses to exhibit any semblance of a pattern. If you tried plotting a graph of the qualifiers in every round of this exam (there are 3 rounds to this..yes) , you would at best come up with a scatter diagram that could hardly give a trend as it were.

I have spent 2 glorious years of my 20's preparing for this examination and have not succeeded. Although at that point it made me sad because my hard work seemed to have been futile, I must say after having joined work I was very quickly able to see the existential aspect of this examination-the truth be told...there is never any exit. If you have gone into this once, and done it purely and entirely for your self (not for your parents, peer pressure or anything extraneous like that) in all likelihood, you are going to want to do it again, until you reach that point of no return.

Many of us when we are young dont spend much time on thinking of more philosophical questions which infact are answered in our Gita - we often find those reading such texts as boring and lost for better food for thought-but the truth is that sometimes these texts have a wisdom that many dont have the patience to unravel. As I read the Gita, Arjun's dilemmas are similar to mine, his concentration often wavering like mine and advice from Krishna is infact a solution.

My 2 years spent solely on this preparation in many ways left me uncertain. Today I work in the development sector and I feel more confident that I will be able to perhaps take up this preparation and perhaps even clear some rounds...but if I dont, I am not the loser, because my job is there and I will just move on.

The mantra as I believe to have learnt out of my experience is to not read a single extra text. One has to re read the same thing again and again until every bone in your body screams it out almost like a parrot. Think strategically, but never read too many books. Just the few standard text books.

I do not know at this stage if this is going to work for me. Probably it will, perhaps it wont, but only time can tell. In the meanwhile the Civil services is just a means for me and not the end. I sincerely wish to work for the people, and I have met and heard people in the villages who know no better, speaking to me of their problems, hoping that I would be able to get them electricity, perhaps a small healthcare centre or a bus to take their women to the clinics, or just write of them, about them and let the world know they exist...the trust that they repose so easily is one that must be respected.

I wish and hope that someday I am able to make that difference.

The target is the blessed year of 2013 and in the meanwhile trying to finish as much in the form of collated  notes every month.

I have already started reading Bipin Chandra's India After Independence and am enjoying it very much. I will do this and some portions from Vajirams' Yellow Books for chronology. This should suffice for my mains as well as Prelims.


My reasons for writing things down this time round are many but one for certain as you may have guessed is to keep me on track. Fingers forever crossed!