Hi,
Before I tell you my story, I want you to know one thing.
When I cleared UPSC Civil Services 2024 with All India Rank 60, people called me a topper. Articles got written. But what most of them didn't say loudly enough — I gave the exam four times. Three of those four times, my name was not on the list.
I'm telling you this because somewhere in a small town in India right now, a student is reading about toppers and thinking — "they are different from me. They cracked it in one go. I will never be like them." I want you to know: I was you.
I'm not from a big city. My father had a transferable job, so I grew up moving between Kendriya Vidyalayas — new city every few years, making friends, leaving them, starting over. After Class 12, I prepared for JEE and got into IIT Kharagpur for a 5-year Economics program. At that point my dream was simple: finish IIT, get a good corporate job, settle down. I didn't even know what UPSC was.
Then 2020 happened. COVID lockdown. I sat in my IIT room and watched the news — migrant workers walking hundreds of kilometres home, barefoot, hungry, carrying children on their shoulders. Families crying because they had no food. And one thought wouldn't leave me: "If I were in administrative power right now, I could actually do something." By the end of lockdown, I had decided. Civil servant. Not for salary or prestige — for the chance to be useful when my country needed people to be useful.
When I started UPSC preparation, I knew nothing. I didn't know what prelims looked like. I didn't know what an "optional subject" was. I didn't know which books to read. So I went to YouTube. Free videos. Topper interviews. I built my own strategy. Not someone else's. Not a coaching's. Mine.
Three years of waking up, studying, writing tests, waiting for results, refreshing that PDF and not finding my name. People around me getting promotions, marriages, holidays — and I was still at the same desk I sat at three years before.
But every failure was teaching me something. The girl who gave the 4th attempt was a completely different person from the girl who gave the 1st — sharper, calmer, more prepared. The failures weren't blocking the success. They were building it.
The fourth time, I gave the exam with everything I had. Got married a few days before the result was announced. And then the list came out. AIR 60. Five years from "what is UPSC?" to IAS officer.