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My foray into Civil Services Examination

My mother was not happy with my nomadic life and on one of
my trips to Madras to see my parents and brothers and sisters
she advised me to try my hand at cracking the IAS and Allied
Service Examinations. It was the third year of my service as
Geologist and I was due to be allotted to Madurai district with
mandate to tour the hills and rock formations on either side of

Cumbum valley.I took her advice seriously and after applying
for the ensuing examination I began to collect all relevant
materials like Text books on Indian History, British History and
Dr.K.S.Krishnan’s book on Stratigraphy of India and my
college notes in different areas of Geology.It was also my habit
to prepare a scrap book containing articles which appeared in
the Hindu on various subjects like Art and Culture, Scientific
topics, Politics etc.So armed with these materials I made a
serious attempt to prepare for the main examination in
October,1962.My camps at Chinnamanur,Periya kulam,
Chithaiyan kottai etc were useful sources of knowledge because
in the district level library at these places rare books like
Macaulay’s Handbook of British History, Warner and Martin’s
Text book of British History, Sardar K.M.Panikar‘s Survey of
Indian History, Nilakanta Shastri’s book of South Indian
History provided a rich reservoir of information and
knowledge. I cleared the written paper with fairly good score. I
obtained 80 percent in Geology, 70 percent in General Essay,
62 percent in Indian History, 60 percent in British History and
50 percent in General Knowledge. When on the first day of the
examination we finished writing on a topic in General Essay I
was accosted by my father waiting at the entrance of Memorial
Hall , on the Broadway as to find which question did I attempt
to answer and when I replied I wrote about traditions of Indian
Music he became furious with disbelief and derisively
questioned what did I know about music in the first instance!
Among the scrapbooks assiduously collected by me from news
papers the Sunday Magazine section of The Hindu’s main

article “Art and Morality” by His Highness Jaya Chamaraja
Wodeyar was priceless and helped me answer any question on

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