Though his sights were set on the IAS, it wasn't easy spurning the job that had come his way -- his background just did not give him such luxuries.

Father M Karuppannan, of Mamarthapetti village in Tamil Nadu's Namakkal district, had stopped his own education at the SSC level, and went to work in the paddy fields of his native village.

That proved a dead end, so Karuppannan had joined a local lorry service, as a 'cleaner'. During that stint, which lasted two years, he learnt to drive and got his license; he then parlayed that into a job as a driver, and with a relatively steady job in hand, married Lakshmi. The couple had two children: Nandakumar, now 26 and Aravindkumar, now 20.

The household ran on Karuppannan's income; as the two boys moved up the academic rungs, expenses escalated and the family finances were stretched impossibly thin.

Given this, Nandakumar could not ignore the bird in hand that was the Railways job, while dreaming of the IAS job he hoped to land some day.

So he joined the Railways, and began the required training. Nights, he shrugged off the fatigue, and studied for yet another attempt at the big one.

This year marked his third -- and, to his mind, final, attempt. When the results came in, his first reaction was relief; that of his parents, pride.

He had ranked 30th all India; in his native Tamil Nadu, where he had taken the exam in his mother tongue, he topped the charts.

Lakshmi, seated in her home in Tiruchirappalli, where the family moved from Namakkal three years ago, now anticipates her son's homecoming. He has not, she says, managed to get leave for a trip home, after the results were announced; hopefully he will come sometime in June, and the family will celebrate.

Photograph, courtesy K Nandakumar's family

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