Meet Sarthak Agarwal, Meme Star

Brut India

Remember Sarthak Agarwal, who featured in several viral memes after topping the CBSE exams in 2014? He’s now got the 17th rank in UPSC exams. He told Brut his secrets, and also weighed in on his favourite memes!

Transcript

00:00Too many of my cousins, too many of my friends have said to me the same thing, that because

00:05of you we got scolded and I'm very sorry to everybody.

00:30I don't know if there's any secret or any recipe for my success or my success.

01:00I think one thing that might have been important is that I think very carefully about whatever

01:05I'm doing before jumping into it, trying to understand what is my motivation, what are

01:11my strengths, what are my weaknesses and how I can contextualize everything to what is

01:15needed.

01:16But, I mean, there's also a fair component of luck and a lot of other things involved

01:21that I do not want to understate having done well in these exams.

01:30I'm a bit embarrassed to admit, but I was kind of consistently good in the schools as

01:34well.

01:35I mean, I was always very interested in academics.

01:41More marks gets you more opportunities.

01:43It gets you into better colleges and so on.

01:45But at the same time, as we move along, I've also noticed myself that the importance of

01:50marks has consistently declined.

01:52For instance, in college, I was hardly concerned about whether I was doing well or not.

01:56But the main priority was to develop a good friend circle, good social networks, take

02:01part in a lot of extracurricular activities that help you build your personality.

02:10I didn't give it as much time as some other candidates were lucky to invest in it.

02:15I mean, I also didn't prepare any notes.

02:19I didn't have any kind of study groups.

02:22I wasn't part of those environments just because of choice.

02:26My strategy was just to gobble up as much news as I could get, not be restricted to

02:32any newspaper, any magazine.

02:34It was very much focused around news, around current affairs.

02:42My target now, and I'm working actively towards it, is how to prepare myself to be able to

02:48do the most I can for development in public service.

02:51And that's where the real challenge lies.

02:54So I want to be a person of value, somebody who can make a difference.

02:58Not just somebody who succeeded in some exams, because again, lots of people do that, doesn't

03:02make a difference to India.

03:12This was actually true.

03:13I did go to the library a lot of times during my lunch break because I enjoyed it.

03:17This very well fits into the stereotype that was propounded around me.

03:21So again, it was very funny, but not true.

03:24Some of them also have gifted me, I don't know, I mean, framed memes or something.

03:30I have one on my desk.

03:31I can show you over here.

03:33It goes like this.

03:34It talks about Lifebuoy and how it doesn't even kill as many germs as my marks.

03:41So I thought it was very funny.

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