Meghna Chakravorty had shut out the world for the last year and half. She had attended just one invitation in December, that too after her Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) Mains examination got over. “But once my Mains results came out at the end of the year, I sunk into my routine all over again from January to prepare for the interview. That meant bare minimum of phone usage or social media and not much of going out either,” says the AK Block girl.
The results were announced on Tuesday and Meghna has reaped the reward of her perseverance, coming 79th on just her second attempt. “There was a buzz that the results might come out on the day, so I was checking the UPSC site and our WhatsApp and Telegram groups on my phone intermittently. The site had possibly crashed for a while so I could not get in but someone posted the PDF file in our group in the afternoon. That is where I saw the result,” she says.
Even then, the only call she made was to her father who was at work and then waited for calls from others. “Since I had seen just a pdf file, I could not be sure if it was the actual result. When a teacher called up to congratulate me, I could finally believe it.”
Meghna Chakravorty of AK Block poses in front of the Union Public Service Commission office in Delhi
Mother and daughter had spent several sleepless nights. “I had worked hard to achieve the best possible result this time itself. Yet such was the mental pressure that in the last few days I was simply hoping for a rank — any rank — and getting the wait over with. On the day of the result, we had breakfast at 10am and forgot about eating all day, so tense were we. Our next meal was dinner, at 11.30pm,” she laughs.
A day in the life
Meghna had put in almost all her waking hours into studies. She would wake up around 8.30am and be at her table by 9.30am. “I would study all day till about 10pm. Before nodding off, I’d just check the phone once for messages and updates or read a story book.”
Meghna drew up her own routine. To keep herself from getting bored, she would switch medium. “If I was not feeling like reading, I would watch some course material in video format or read the day’s newspaper. Or I would write a test, prepare for a mock interview or do a bit of math for the aptitude test.”
For the interview preparation, she had enrolled at the Satyendra Nath Tagore Civil Services Study Centre in FD Block. “They held five mock interview sessions with different panels and I also attended their discussion classes,” she said.
The first time she had taken the test from Delhi. “I was then staying with friends there in a shared apartment and had enrolled at Rau’s IAS.” That time, she did not clear the aptitude test in the preliminary round for three marks.
She decided to return home. “Here, I knew distractions would be less and I’d not worry about anything else.”
Home advantage
There is no magic formula offered in coaching classes, Meghna points out. “I am not sure if being in Delhi for civil service preparations offers any overwhelming advantages. People do it out of fear. No one had appeared for UPSC in my family so I too had initially thought that way and stayed back in Delhi after finishing my Masters from Jawaharlal Nehru University,” said the only child of a finance professional working in an IT firm and an administrator in a Sector V business school.
Good teaching, she explains, at best, can clarify some concepts. “At the end of the day, one has to do the studying by oneself. One can appear for mock tests from anywhere. I did so from Calcutta itself. Course materials are available online. UPSC entrance has a dynamic format. The main challenge is managing the workload rather than the difficulty of the subject,” she says. Her optional subject was political science and international relations on which she wrote two papers. “I chose it as it was my subject at the Masters level too.”
Meghna with her parents, Udit and Shaoli Chakravorty, Meghna Chakravorty in Delhi
Meghna’s family had shifted from Mumbai and settled in Salt Lake when she was in Class VI. She completed Plus II from Modern High School for Girls before setting off for St. Stephen’s School in Delhi to study history. Her Masters at JNU was in politics and international relations. “It was because I was interested in such subjects that I wanted to join the civil services, and not the other way round.”
Time to chill
There has not been much scope to relax even after her exams. “My interview was on April 4 and we came back from Delhi on April 11. Since then, we have been tense about the result,” she smiles.
It is only now that she has started watching cricket. “I hope we get a new IPL champion. So I am rooting for Delhi, where I spent so many years, or RCB (Royal Challengers Bangalore) for Virat Kohli,” she smiles.
The girl, whose favourite genre in fiction is magic realism, believes that the magic in her reality has just begun. She has opted for the IAS or the IFS cadre and is expected to get one or the other. Service allocation will take place in July-August and training will start in September. And whether she will get to serve in her home state will be clear only in December.