As I write this, my friend Naeem is probably sitting in front of a UPSC interview panel somewhere in Delhi.

14 years. That’s how long he’s been at this. I called it a vanvaas when I told my mom - the 14-year forest exile from the Ramayana. Except Naeem’s exile has been in Mukherjee Nagar hostels and coaching libraries, not the Dandaka forest.

The result might matter to him. It doesn’t matter to me. After 14 years, the effort is the thing.

my orbit

I started thinking about UPSC when I was 29. A diary entry from December 2022:

12/1/2022 - Considering whether I should prepare for IAS? What do I want to do in life? As my career?

A year later:

29/1/2023 - A year has passed, all considerations are now gone. I’m definitely doing it - pre & mains of this year. A lot of ups / downs in my personal life as well.

I never sat for the exam.

Not once. Not prelims. Not even the application.

I’m 32 now - the age limit for general category. The door is closed. And in 3.5 years of actively thinking about this, I didn’t manage to walk through it even once.

I have bipolar disorder. The highs bring goal-oriented thinking - grand plans, intense focus, the feeling that this time I’ll see it through. The lows bring “what’s the point of it all.”

The cruelest part? The UPSC application windows fell, every single time, during my depressive phases.

In my last attempt, I’d set calendar invites for the application deadline. I watched it approach. I knew this would be my final chance. And I just… couldn’t care. The form sat there. I didn’t fill it.

“My prep isn’t up to par.” “No point sitting for it since I don’t even want to become a civil servant.” These were the thoughts. Reasonable-sounding. But really just depression talking.

सपने यूँ तो दिखाए सैकड़ों तूने
कुछ मगर या रब पूरे किए हैं

(You showed me hundreds of dreams / but completed only a few, O Lord.)

Here’s the thing though: I never wanted to be a civil servant. I knew I’d make a poor officer - I’m not good at making decisions, I like to jump from topic to topic. A PhD felt impossible for the same reason: 4-5 years on one thing? Not me.

What I wanted was to study the syllabus. Indian history. Polity. The structure of the state I live in. I felt it would fill gaps in my understanding of the India around me. Help me live a fuller life.

That’s still true. Nothing stops me from studying it now. But the structure is gone. The forcing function. The excuse.

I’ll admit: I heaved a sigh of relief when I turned 32. UPSC prep had become an escape - an excuse to not confront my personal life’s actual problems. Now I can study what I want without worrying about Current Affairs, which I never liked anyway.

Of all the prelims topics, I had the most fun re-learning Indian History - my favorite subject in Class 10 too. For mains, I never got far. Watched some philosophy videos from The Quest - mostly Indic philosophy. Jainism, especially, was a revelation. I knew almost nothing about it before.

For Hindi literature optional, I got Vikas Divyakirti’s course videos from a guy on Telegram. Never finished them.

Consuming videos has always been easier for me - I play them like podcasts during commutes and walks. I wanted to get to serious study from books. But alas.

naeem

I still remember the day I met him.

Some time in 2012. We were standing near the FET gate at Jamia. First year of BTech. He told me he’d be preparing for UPSC - he really wanted to become an IAS officer.

I, for some reason, assumed he hadn’t heard of Facebook. “Ek site hoti hai jispe msg bhej sakte hain,” I said.

“Bhai mujhe pata hai Facebook kya hai.”

I don’t know why I assumed that. Maybe because he looked like he was a knows-nothing-about-technology village boy. He was - a farming family from Muzaffarnagar. But that assumption says more about me than him.

तू था अपने खेत में मुझे भी था काम
तेरी मेरी चूक का बाबू पड़ गया नाम

(You were in your fields, I too had my work / Our lapses, dear friend, became a babu.)1

I remember calling Naeem on his birthday in 2013. He picked up and said: “Are Shadab bhai, abhi khet mein hun, nyaar kaat raha hun.” (Brother, I’m in the fields right now, cutting fodder.)

A farmer’s son. Cutting fodder on his birthday. Still thinking about IAS.

December 2015. Placement season at Jamia. Everyone was stressed about getting jobs. Naeem, obviously, wasn’t sitting for placements - he had other plans.

He told me he’d jogged in his room for 3 hours straight one night. Just pacing. Agitated by the thought that his friends would soon have jobs and salaries, and he’d have nothing to show.

We lost touch for a while after that. He dove deep. But we’d still meet once a year or so.

I properly met him last at Mohib’s wedding. What struck me wasn’t just his personality - it was his ability to speak on any topic that came up. At length. Bringing forth viewpoints I’d never considered. 14 years of studying everything will do that to you.

He’s cleared prelims and mains multiple times. Got selected in other services too. But he doesn’t want anything less than IAS. The top. Nothing else.

That kind of consistency - working toward a singular goal for 14 years - is something I genuinely admire. It’s why I couldn’t do a PhD. I like to jump from topic to topic. Naeem doesn’t jump. He marches.

the money

I went through the 80,000 Hours research back during my MTech. Thought hard about what I wanted to do with my career. What would have “impact.”

Then I got placed at an HFT. 40 lakhs per annum. I hadn’t imagined that number was possible for me. I took the job. Didn’t think much of it.

I now make a crore a year.2

The work is intellectually stimulating. It pays absurdly well. But it doesn’t feel like it helps anyone except me and my family. I could donate the money, sure. But that comes with its own set of challenges. I wanted something where I could directly impact lives.

That’s partly why UPSC appealed. A civil servant, at least in theory, serves the public. The work matters in a way that front-running retail investors doesn’t.3

Once the UPSC door closed, I briefly fantasized about working at ISRO. A place where my skills might do some good. But that’s idyllic. I’m too used to the money. I can’t imagine giving it up.

Sad. But true.

the hujoom

I visited Old Rajinder Nagar and Karol Bagh once - the two hubs of UPSC coaching in Delhi. Went early morning, around 7-8 AM. The streets weren’t bustling yet. Chai stalls hadn’t opened. The coaching centers were being cleaned up. PG ads plastered on every wall.

The coaching industry is massive now. An entire economy built around this one exam. Online courses, offline batches, test series, hostels, Telegram groups selling pirated videos. Democratic in a way - anyone can access the material. Predatory in another - ₹50,000 courses, ₹15,000 test series, hostels charging ₹8,000 a month for a shared room.

I couldn’t see a silver lining at first. Just exploitation.

Then I thought about it differently.

Every year, lakhs of students prepare for UPSC. Most don’t clear it. But in the process, they study Indian history, polity, economy, geography, ethics. They learn how the government works. What bills are being passed. What the Constitution says.

This hujoom - this crowd of aspirants - will become an informed citizenry. Even the ones who fail. Especially the ones who fail. They’ll go back to their towns and villages knowing more about the state than most people ever will.

That’s a silver lining. But it comes at too high a cost.

Students committing suicide. Students dying in basement library floods during the monsoon. Kids betting their entire lives on one exam, one interview, one chance.

The cost is too damn high.

what remains

I believe everyone should study bits of the UPSC syllabus - not to become civil servants, but to become better citizens.

We distance ourselves from the workings of government. We don’t track what bills are being pushed. We don’t understand the bureaucratic machinery that governs our lives. And that distance gives them freedom to do as they wish.

Learning history and polity wouldn’t solve that. But it would help. It would give us perspective. It would make us ask: what should exist in the world?

That question led me to Huqooq - an app to help people exercise their fundamental rights, starting with RTI. And to Saarthi - a dream about ride-hailing that treats drivers with dignity.

Neither is UPSC. But both came from the same place: thinking about the India around me. Wanting to understand it. Wanting to improve it.

One figure emerged who connected multiple threads for me: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Freedom fighter. First education minister. Also a Quranic scholar.

I’ve recently ordered the first part of his tafsir - Tarjuman ul Quran. And his memoir, India Wins Freedom.

Let’s see if I’ll have time to read them.

end

The fact that I couldn’t sit for even one exam will sting for life. That’s grief I’ll carry.

But there’s also this: I can now study what I want, at my own pace, without the pressure of deadlines and Current Affairs compilations. The door closed, but the material didn’t disappear.

And there’s Naeem.

14 years. Muzaffarnagar to Delhi. Fodder fields to interview panels. A singular focus I’ll never have, and that’s okay. I admire it from here.

Right now, as I finish writing this, he’s probably answering questions about governance and ethics and the state of the nation. Whatever the result, he’s already won something. 14 years of studying everything, understanding everything, becoming the kind of person who can speak on any topic with depth I can only envy.

The result will come. Or it won’t. But the vanvaas is ending.

  1. A play on Nida Fazli. ↩

  2. I say this with disdain, not pride. The number feels obscene when I think about what I actually do. ↩

  3. I wrote about this dissonance in my Saarthi post. “I work at an HFT - we front-run retail investors for a living. Glass houses, stones, etc.” ↩