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Professional success
During our college placement season, many of us were fixated on the salaries. If a company offered even Rs 2,000 more, it felt infinitely more attractive. But looking back, the initial salary had practically zero correlation with how well people...
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Challenging Realities
During my training with the Indian Police Service, we were attached to an elite army unit in Nagaland for exposure. So a few days after we landed,...
Is promptness such a great virtue?
A friend of mine doing investment banking with a Wall Street bank once told me about his managing director, who would frantically reply to every...
Anger reveals our weakness
During my stint in the Civil Services, the most powerful person I ever worked with was the Kerala Chief Minister, which at that time was Mr. AK...
Start Now
When I started my Civil Services or IITJEE preparation, I had no idea how I would get to the finish line – so I just bought a few books and started...
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Building Habits
When I was in the 9th grade, I built a habit that inadvertently helped me crack the Civil Services interview almost a decade later. In those days, I started reading newspapers religiously because I loved following the international stories (e.g.,...
Fresh Start
When I finished my BTech, instead of feeling on top of the world, I felt dejected and defeated. Till I went to IIT, like any teenager, I felt that I could accomplish anything – I felt bullet-proof. But during college, for the first time in my life,...
Life is a Journey
Soon after I landed in Kerala on joining the Indian Police Service (IPS), my batchmates and I did a courtesy call on an officer of the rank Additional Director General of Police – the second-highest rank in the IPS. Naturally, as rookies, our rank...
Life is often the best teacher
When I was in the 5th grade, I learnt the basics of monetary theory from a local shopkeeper in Assam. Here is what happened. At that time, my father got posted to a remote place in Assam’s Kamrup district. There, the most prominent shop in the...