Nivas

It is said that when the english left India, they left behind two of the best gift to their former colony. The great Indian railways and the Indian Civil services. It is still a surprise that free india has added only 10-15% more to the area covered by railways since the British raj... the founding fathers of the constitution were wise enough to create a seperate entity called UPSC to look after the second gift of indian civil services. ICS is now IAS,IPS,IRS,IAAS, IFS blah blah ...what not... The point is most of us dot know about most of the services except of course IAS, IPS and IFS(Foreign service)... long long ago i had nursed an ambition to get into the civil services if my first ambition of being a doc (dont ask me why i became a s/w guy..i have o answers)... SO i was very much interested in becoming an IAAS person. Partly bcos i liked accounts and auditing and partly because until 3 years ago i wud not have been fulfilling the physical requirements for IAS and IFS.. IPS is still outta quesion for me ... though i wud have loved to be an IPS officer and thereby going to the central police forces.....with all these in the back burner, i chose he best wayto get money and ever thought of what to do next.. have been sort of aimless... in the meantime, i met my old classmate nivas.. he had quit his job to prepare for the xams .. this guy had put in a lot of effort to qualify for the prestigious services....
Nivas is a live wire... when i first met him in 1994, i did have initial apprehensions about him... then, 14 yrs ago, i had been just back from Guwahati and kanchipuram is definitely not the sort of place that would make u feel at home .... as usual i was shifting a school after three years... and unlike many KV brethren, i never had comfort with the syllabus as i had studied in a multitude of em.... The matriculation board syllabus was a bit ming boggling after the stint in assam, to top it there was always some pressure to get into the top ten list n the class, and each class had its own star who was pretty much a veteran in school... Initially , i didnt know much about this guy as he kept a low profile... and may be because i was an introvert, i dint speak to him.. i usually clung around a bunch of guys who were new like me... but after a few days, i happened to sit with hm.. then we became regular first benchers..... this guy used to taunt and tease everyone under the sun... he didnt even spare his cousin vijay who was our classmate too.. vijay was very a calm boy back then.. dunno how he is these days..... ok back to our hero...
Our hero was born just aweek after me.. 20th Feb 1982... we shared a good rapport but used to fight a lot... fighting was restricted to war of words only... i am never capable of a hand to hand fight and nivas too was frail back then...
Nivas had avery good handwrting and was very good at oration... not that he is not now :-)
he always puts in a huge anount of effort in anything he does... he stood fist in about 100 guys in the matric examintaion where the odds o him finishing first were not very great... thats cos there were many mammas boys in the school...
My mother was impressed with his docile nature once when he came to visit me when i was ill.. but that was just acting u see...

After 10th we had been pals thru mails (not email it was the written snail mail)... but suddenly that link too broke.... then there was no contact for a gud 6-7 years then suddenly i bumped into Vijay through orkut... he first question i ask vijay is wheres nivas... (Vijay must have cursed me under his breath as i didnt enquire too much about him...) I got hold of hs cell number and called him from london... Usually i never spent more than 5-10 minutes in calls while iwas in lndon and mostly i called only my parents.. my roomie harsha used to say that i make effective use of telecom resources... even harsha was taken aback when he saw that i was oncall for an hour with this guy....

Nivas had cleared prelims of civil servces with ease and was coolng his heels at home after the mains exams when i met him last.. boy he had put in a lot of weight and had a small bade babulike ponch.... why not hes gonna be running our country as he has made it to the PI round with 1800 odd other people... the goi communiqué says hat there are over 70 vacancies to be filled in with over 110 in IAS alone... so our man here might land anywhere into the babudom......

My dad calld me and said find out abt ur friend.. i nver saw him so excited for someone els's results.....

From the horse's mouth, the plan is to serve the country as a bureaucrat( this happens to be a word in good terms but spoilt these days ) for 10-15 years.. then apply for a VRS and start serving he nation through politics... way to go man..
I might join his party or be his campaign manager :P .....
Anyways all the best to this guy who can arguably be the best civil servant not because he is my friend but because he is a good hardworking intelligent person....
WAY TO GO NIVAS!!!!!