About us - Our Learnings

We fall, we get up, we fall again..or so goes the sine curve of life. Or maybe not. Not when you write an exam, any exam where the outcome is not easy to detach with. Or where the sum total of how we view ourselves hangs on the thin thread called result. 

That’s what happened to me, Katyayani. I have written extensively and candidly about my UPSC Journey but even today, no words do justice to capturing the brutality of emotion I felt, how unforgiving I was to myself and how for a large time my hopes and aspirations, from my own self, were tethered to an outcome that only one word can capture - Result. 

4 years hence, do I feel the tests of life are the ones that are more debilitating, where ‘life’ literally hangs on that thin thread, variously called hope, miracles, effort or just surrender? Absolutely!

I am acutely aware of the fact that today, I write from a place of ease and comfort - some might call it privilege - knowing that my journey as far as this exam goes, reached a conclusion that I was aiming for, if not wholly, substantially. That lends all that I write to being viewed through a tougher lens. But a probabilistic event as a result doesn’t take away from the years of toil, helplessness and hopelessness, right? It’s only fair to understand that it’s the journey that shapes us, outcomes only place at strategic standpoints. The foundation is the journey, the outcomes can only build upon that, if they may.

Wouldn’t take more than my due share of space on this post, as this has been prompted by a shared journey that my sister Narayani and I undertook - the ties greater than blood, I believe are those of love, and this journey was a leap of faith into one dream that was prompted by an event very personal, that shaped us, defined us but did not limit us.

The aspired for conclusion of this dream only gives us the platform to talk about it. In this multiverse of outcomes, life chooses to give us some, giving us the agency to let that event be an Achilles Heel or the Algorithm that we get to debug. A few emotions remain resilient - the grit you develop, the grind you go through and the grout you choose to fill in the gaps of life with. 

This exam, like life, has the potential to lead us a blow strong enough to make us question the basis of our very being, and equally has the potential to land us in a zone where we feel assured enough to climb mountains other than this exam. Just that how I see this is when we sign up for this exam, we just bring the uncertainty hitherto unseen and unexplored, rather best unreflected upon, into a tangible, manifest form. It just stares us in the eye.

The intended outcome here isn’t a Eureka moment to know what works for this exam. We are clueless, we are learners on a journey, content with the knowledge that we won’t be able to decipher a few mysteries. As long as those mysteries, or the lack of them lead us further on our soul journey, we try to embrace them - sometimes with a laugh of leisure, at other times with the tears of turbulence, but sooner or later, always, with the symphony of surrender. We don’t get an option, do we? 

Always, 
Katyayani
AIR 246, UPSC CSE 2017

Through the umpteen exams of life - both literally and metaphorically, we realized somewhere in the course that guidance is a very crucial factor. Even Brian Weiss talks about the guiding Masters who help us navigate through life. So when it came to exams, we realized the guidance required was in a similar dimension if not magnitude - physically, mentally, emotionally, morally. Physical tests come in the form of gruelling hours one puts through or the grinding of pens against paper as one rushes one’s hands at super-human speed in the Mains exams. Mentally, nerves are required when one is doubtful of clearing GS1 paper in Prelims yet one keeps nerves to write CSAT with equal fight. Emotional vulnerability arises in so many weak moments, so many of them, where one just feels distraught, lost, delayed, incompetent, unworthy, and what not. Words might fall short but the gamut of emotions don’t. 

In this course of our preparation, for various examinations, now spanning nearly a decade, we have gone through multiple learnings - learnt some, learning others still. We will just attempt to share our little nothings - hoping that it becomes a little something for someone. We have also seen this cycle of examinations, frustrations, failures, wins through multiple lenses - as insiders, as outsiders, as family, as the candidate. And we know that nothing at all matters - we are just a tiny dot in the whole Universe, yet we wait for results which mean the world to us! 

So we will take you through our journey - not through the Do’s and Don’t’s (they are easier said than done), not through the “This is the way to do it”, or “Do this and score 250+”, not through the “I said you so”. The notes that will be uploaded are no guarantee of scoring the highest (or even the lowest) marks, no guarantee of being the best in town. But they have been made with a lot of love, hardwork, and dreams. We are sharing them in the hope that someone who finds them will benefit from them even if in the tiniest way, even if not on paper via a prelims 0.1, but through increased confidence of making it in this attempt. 

Just so you know, it doesn’t matter to us which attempt you are on, which exam it is. People in the 1st make it, so do those in the nth. Regardless of the number, we are there always. 

Only people who have been through this know that nothing said ever works, and you will never know what really worked! 

Just one more thing - It is not an attempt to romanticize our journey at all, it was PB Shelley who said it in Ozymandias so we know we are mere mortals.

Ozymandias:

“And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay”

Best,
Narayani
AIR 144, UPSC CSE 2021