Hobbies & interests

Story hook

Dholpur House, May 2024. Ananya Kulkarni, an architect from Pune, has listed "Hindustani classical vocal music — Kirana gharana" in her DAF hobby column. The board chair — a former Cabinet Secretary — flips to that page and asks casually:

"Kirana. Tell us — who founded the Kirana gharana? And can you hum one bandish in Raga Yaman for us, please?"

The room went still. Three board members leaned forward. Ananya took a long breath, said "Of course, sir — Abdul Karim Khan, late 19th century, Kirana in Uttar Pradesh", and hummed a four-line bandish — "E ri aali piya bina" — in Raga Yaman, Vilambit Ektaal. Sixteen seconds of voice, clear, unhurried, unembarrassed.

The chair closed the DAF. The next 20 minutes felt like a conversation among musicians, not an interrogation. Ananya scored 215/275 — the highest in her batch. Three other candidates that week had also listed Hindustani music. Two could not name a single gharana. One panicked when asked to hum.

The hobby column is the easiest section to lie on, and the easiest section for a board to catch you lying on. The candidate who writes "reading" and cannot name the last three books has failed before opening her mouth. The candidate who writes "Hindustani classical music" and cannot hum is finished. But the candidate who owns her hobby — owns its history, its terminology, its current practice — banks 30-50 marks.

Why this matters for UPSC

The DAF hobby section is probed in roughly 80 percent of interviews, usually in the first 10 minutes after the hometown opener. Boards use it for three reasons: to test honesty (the hobby is the easiest field to fake), to test depth (a real hobby has terminology), and to create psychological space (a hobby answer that lands relaxes the candidate for the harder probes ahead). A hobby answer that fails injects 20 minutes of low-grade suspicion into the rest of the interview. A hobby answer that lands earns the board's curiosity.