THENI: The children stopped playing all of a sudden and waved at an aeroplane flying past the clouds in Sillamarathupatti village.
Two decades down the lane, nothing much changed in the village as such, but one of the boys who waved at the aeroplane is flying high, as he has been selected for the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and is now undergoing training at the prestigious Sushma Swaraj Institute of Foreign Service in New Delhi.
Meet M Arun Pandianathan. The 29-year-old son of a cleaner-turned taxi driver is getting ready to fly to Russia to work at the Indian mission in Moscow. The villager's achievement testifies again what Confucius said eons ago: The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential… These are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.
It’s sheer determination and hard work that helped Arun emerge with flying colours in the UPSC-2021 examination (All India rank of 344 and 7th rank in State), that too, in his fourth attempt. The youngest of the two children of Murugesan-Nagajothi couple, Arun first thought of a career in civil service during his engineering days at Shiv Nadar University in Noida.
Later, it turned into a goal when he came to know about Collectors who took bold steps to curb the mining mafia in Uttar Pradesh. But, as fate would have it, Arun could not pursue his dream initially, for soon after completing his course, he started working as a maintenance engineer due to his family’s poor financial background.
His desire to become a civil servant was so strong that he would later quit his job with the permission of his family to join a civil service coaching centre in Chennai. "My mother was initially against the idea of quitting the job. But my father and sister extended their wholehearted support," he says.
Though he passed the preliminary examination in his first attempt in 2017, Arun was unable to clear the mains as he was down with typhoid. In the second attempt in 2018, he cleared both and attended the interview, but it was his fewer marks in the mains that cost him.
After the two failures, he took up a job as a content manager in Bengaluru and got married to Vishnubharathi, a classmate of his at the civil service academy.
Though he started working in Bengaluru, Arun did not let go of his dream. In the third attempt, he again cleared both prelims and mains, but couldn’t feature in the final rank list. He quit his job to prepare for the 2020 exam and finally nailed it.
On choosing IFS over IAS, Arun says that though he was initially interested in becoming an IAS officer, he found his passion in IFS where he could deal with foreign affairs, military affairs, trade and commerce, etc., and learn foreign languages, visit foreign countries and contribute to the country’s foreign affair strategies.
Arun says he owes it to his father who let him chase all these big dreams. Respect and love overflow when he speaks about him. "Though my father wanted to study, he had to drop out in Class 7 as he had brothers and sisters to take care of. But he managed to complete Class 10 by writing the exam as a private candidate. From childhood onwards, he encouraged me and my sister, Karthiga Devi, to study. He also made us read newspapers daily," says Arun, whose childhood ambition was to become a pilot. He had to relinquish that dream when he came to know that it is an expensive affair.
From the boy who waved at the aeroplane to the teenager who dreamt of becoming a pilot to the man who is getting ready to go to Russia, Arun says he would have reached nowhere if not for the support extended by his family members, especially his sister, who footed his yearly hostel fees of Rs 55,000.
"Whenever I fail or when I am down, I think about the story 'Robert the Bruce and the Spider'. This story gives me motivation and more energy, and I start my work again like the spider," Arun signs off.