failure

Abhijeet Yadav secured AIR 653 in CSE 2017 but did not get posted to any service. His experience of failing six times in the UPSC exam and overcoming the pain to start afresh is going viral on social media.

Whether it is Shahrukh Khan romancing Kajol in Dilwale, or Rajnikanth shaking a leg with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in Robot - meet Ramji Natarajan, better known as 'Location Guru'.

What happens when you spend years preparing for the UPSC exam and still don’t crack it? Four aspirants share details on how they dealt with failure.

At 22, IAS officer Anju Sharma cracked UPSC in her very first attempt, proving that failures are only stepping stones to success

“For two years, I sat at home, feeling like a burden. Some said my parents spent ‘too much on a girl’s education’. After a point, I started believing it."

“I realised that taking my life would be a horrible thing when I could spend it helping others in need.”

Struggling to meet ends, Jodharam Patel’s father gave him an ultimatum—either score above 70 per cent in boards to secure a stable job or move to Mumbai and work as a labourer. Here’s how he wrote his own fate.

The first attempt in 2010 was one without any preparation. Recounting that experience, he says, “I felt bad that I had lost one precious attempt that way. At that time, we had only four attempts to clear the examination.”

21 years later, Manish says that he is very proud of what he did that day. “I felt very proud of it actually, and to this day, I feel proud—for both, my near-failing grade and my owning up the failure as an 18-year-old.”

From award-winning actors to visionary entrepreneurs, these inspiring Indians refused to let setbacks and failures dictate their destiny.