I had great difficulty spending my life at Trivandrum, after having a "totally rebellious", as my parents called it, for 5+ years at Chennai.
Small town, its tranquility, lots of new people, new ambitions, my parents shedding a lot of their inhibitions etc had made it a lot easier, but still I wanted more.
I joined an odd "marathon" of sorts, just a kilometer long. Joined a "different" type of organization called Innovation eXperience, which gave me really lots to experience and a cool set of friends.
Had finally decided to seriously start preparing for the civil services exam. Joined a coaching institute, for the evening batch. I understood, my classmates, all men, found it a bit weird to see me there... but contrary to all expectations, I can assure you all, returning home by auto and bus at night 9pm was not a very tough job after all. My parents were concerned, bit they had anyways started accepting the fact that I'd face anything to fulfill my desires. I too had no option as I was working during the day. After a month, got my bike. Honestly I realized that the auto + bus was far more safe. At times, men used to follow me when I was on bike. Fortunately, I too could take it as a game. I was never scared, never took any of the short routes, strictly kept to the main roads, and gave them a good chase. I also felt good, a god adrenaline rush each night, after a long and tiresome day.
Soon it was time for all classes to be wrapped up. Just 3 months remained for the exams. I had taken leave from my office. I was sitting at home and studying. I used to feel good and confident. I was preparing for the UPSC prelims exam, with great vigour, but poor direction. I was supposed to mug up all details regarding all those factual topics - history, geography, economics, polity. I was instead lost in the details within the Indian Constitution - a beautiful craft, the philosophical and provoking articles in the centre page of The Hindu, the piercing articles of Economic and Political Weekly, books and talks of Amartya Sen, Prof. Swaminathan, Ramachandra Guha and P. Sainath.
I understood, I was drifting towards work from TISS and UNDP. I was actually losing interest in sitting and preparing for the exam. I wanted to be on field, work in the deelopment sector, mobilize all the contacts and knowledge obtained in my life. It was becoming more and more difficlut to just sit with the books and make notes. I was reminded of a story of a friend who too got carried away during this preparation. Unfortunateky, in his case, he neither fared the exams well, nor did he work in the development sector. He shut his one passion for the other, wasted away more than a year, was depressed and took a long time to get back to regular life. I did not want to fall in the trap.
I looked for different avenues to spent my energy on. Was planning on travel, volunteering, doing courses etc, but determined to do all these after I write the UPSC prelims well. It was during this time, that I chanced uopn an odd mail from a linked in discussion group. I lead me to the SBI YFI page. Some disclaimer on the top "This does not lead to job at SBI" was actually interesting for me, as I had never wanted to work in a bank. I read through the wntire site and the alumni blog. Re-read the application form some ten times. Tried filling in some of the queries too. Even talked to some people about it. All responses were negative. I "starred" the mail, closed all the pages and got back to my studies. I had imagined that I would forget all about it, but fortunately, I hadn't.
I had opened the site and repeated the same exercise for some 5-6 times before the last day. Finally, at midnight, last day, I applied. I was too astonished to find a pretty fast reply, within 2-3 days, saying that I had to choose a venue for my interview. I had searched for SBI YFI on FB and was too overwhelmed to find that I had been called for the interview, in spite of 6000+ candidates applying ofr the same.
Small town, its tranquility, lots of new people, new ambitions, my parents shedding a lot of their inhibitions etc had made it a lot easier, but still I wanted more.
I joined an odd "marathon" of sorts, just a kilometer long. Joined a "different" type of organization called Innovation eXperience, which gave me really lots to experience and a cool set of friends.
Had finally decided to seriously start preparing for the civil services exam. Joined a coaching institute, for the evening batch. I understood, my classmates, all men, found it a bit weird to see me there... but contrary to all expectations, I can assure you all, returning home by auto and bus at night 9pm was not a very tough job after all. My parents were concerned, bit they had anyways started accepting the fact that I'd face anything to fulfill my desires. I too had no option as I was working during the day. After a month, got my bike. Honestly I realized that the auto + bus was far more safe. At times, men used to follow me when I was on bike. Fortunately, I too could take it as a game. I was never scared, never took any of the short routes, strictly kept to the main roads, and gave them a good chase. I also felt good, a god adrenaline rush each night, after a long and tiresome day.
Soon it was time for all classes to be wrapped up. Just 3 months remained for the exams. I had taken leave from my office. I was sitting at home and studying. I used to feel good and confident. I was preparing for the UPSC prelims exam, with great vigour, but poor direction. I was supposed to mug up all details regarding all those factual topics - history, geography, economics, polity. I was instead lost in the details within the Indian Constitution - a beautiful craft, the philosophical and provoking articles in the centre page of The Hindu, the piercing articles of Economic and Political Weekly, books and talks of Amartya Sen, Prof. Swaminathan, Ramachandra Guha and P. Sainath.
I understood, I was drifting towards work from TISS and UNDP. I was actually losing interest in sitting and preparing for the exam. I wanted to be on field, work in the deelopment sector, mobilize all the contacts and knowledge obtained in my life. It was becoming more and more difficlut to just sit with the books and make notes. I was reminded of a story of a friend who too got carried away during this preparation. Unfortunateky, in his case, he neither fared the exams well, nor did he work in the development sector. He shut his one passion for the other, wasted away more than a year, was depressed and took a long time to get back to regular life. I did not want to fall in the trap.
I looked for different avenues to spent my energy on. Was planning on travel, volunteering, doing courses etc, but determined to do all these after I write the UPSC prelims well. It was during this time, that I chanced uopn an odd mail from a linked in discussion group. I lead me to the SBI YFI page. Some disclaimer on the top "This does not lead to job at SBI" was actually interesting for me, as I had never wanted to work in a bank. I read through the wntire site and the alumni blog. Re-read the application form some ten times. Tried filling in some of the queries too. Even talked to some people about it. All responses were negative. I "starred" the mail, closed all the pages and got back to my studies. I had imagined that I would forget all about it, but fortunately, I hadn't.
I had opened the site and repeated the same exercise for some 5-6 times before the last day. Finally, at midnight, last day, I applied. I was too astonished to find a pretty fast reply, within 2-3 days, saying that I had to choose a venue for my interview. I had searched for SBI YFI on FB and was too overwhelmed to find that I had been called for the interview, in spite of 6000+ candidates applying ofr the same.
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