Today Indian Masterminds presents a story of a person who faced struggles early on in life and managed to make a way through them to successfully clear the civil services exam. He is Varun Baranwal, who lost his father when he was in his 10th grade. Losing a father is the worst nightmare for any child. However, there was nothing his family could do to save him, as he had a heart attack.
The situation was devastating for Varun who grew up in a small town of Boisar in the Palghar district of Maharashtra. He always dreamt of becoming a doctor and was working on it while his father used to run a bicycle repairing shop just to make ends meet and provide a good life to his children. All dreams went into the drain when his father left for the heavenly adobe.
As Varun was in the 10th grade at that time and had given his final exams, four days after the tragic incident, he got his result. He scored the second-highest rank in the whole town. This was good news for him, but it couldn’t compensate the vacuum his father left behind. His further plans to study had to be stalled as the loan for the hospital bills kept him and his family in a lot of debt.
PEOPLE INVESTED IN HIS CALIBER
The college admission fee was Rs. 10,000 and Varun and his family, at that time, did not have an extra penny to spare. Varun, even after scoring such good numbers in the exams, was left with a feeling that he would never be able to study further. His friends and teachers were amazed by his score and would ask him about his future plans, which would make him feel even more low.
However, one day, Dr. Kampli, who treated his father before his passing away, was crossing his shop and stopped by when he saw Varun working there. He asked how he was keeping up after his father’s death, to which Varun replied that he quit his studies due to financial issues.
Within no time, Dr. Kampli took out the required amount and handed it over to Varun to pursue his further studies. The next two months were difficult for Varun as he used to wake up early, attend school, take tuition to earn some money in the afternoons, and help his mother at night with the accounts at the shop.
As Varun was facing issues in paying the school fees of Rs. 650 per month, his teachers pooled funds to support him.
Varun later joined MIT, Pune and completed his engineering from there. During his college days, he used to teach his classmates to earn enough to pay the college fees for two years. Later, he got a scholarship for two years.
UPSC JOURNEY
In the meantime, he got a job offer from a multinational company named Deloitte. Life was about to get on track, finally, as in a year’s time, he would be able to put an end to all the struggles his family had been through.
But Varun’s life took a different turn! He happened to attend Anna Hazare’s movement for the Jan Lokpal Bill and the anti-corruption fight moved him.
He then thought that working in a private job won’t solve a bigger purpose and, hence, he utilised his six months of joining Deloitte for UPSC preparation. Varun cleared the UPSC exam with flying colours, as he secured the top rank of 32 in the year 2014, to become an IAS officer.
Thus, life took a detour, and just when he was all set to become a MNC employee, he changed tacks to join civil services to serve the nation.
