Q2 · UPSC Civil Services Mains 2021 · Essay · 125 marks · 1 min read

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Your perception of me is a reflection of you; my reaction to you is an awareness of me.

Topic: Philosophical and ethical quotes. Syllabus: Philosophical and ethical quotes Same official PYQ from year-wise 2021 and Philosophical and ethical quotes.

Essay map

Opening scene

Anecdote

A new officer hears ‘you people’ in a teashop and burns. Later he hears the same shape of sentence in his own noting about a village. The first insult showed the shop. The second sentence showed him. The line is that double pane.

Keep this in every paragraph

One stand

Perception is often projection. Reaction is character. Write to use the first clause against prejudice, and the second against the cult of blame.

Use once, in a scene — do not dump names

Quotes to earn

  • Gandhi

    Be the change — the reaction as the pane we can wash.

  • Vedanta nod

    The world as seen through a mind — use once; then return to the teashop. Do not dissolve a blow into metaphysics.

Turn each heading into a full paragraph in the hall

Heading map

What the line is asking

  • Your perception of me: bias, caste-eye, a feed’s stereotype, a lover’s hope.
  • My reaction: the only pane I can wash today.
  • Vedanta / a modern therapy cousin — one honest nod, not a gurudom.

Self

  • We meet our own fear in the other’s face. A pause is the washcloth.

Society

  • A rumour about a community is a portrait of the rumourer.
  • Still: the target’s anger is data, not ‘their karma’. The first clause must not gaslight.

Office

  • A file that ‘sees’ a petitioner as a type. 360-degree feedback as a civic mirror.
  • Police reform: the public’s perception is also a portrait of the khaki — sometimes earned.

World

  • A country’s ‘image’ campaign vs how it treats a student at a visa counter.

The counter

A Dalit’s testimony is not ‘a reflection of the listener’ in the sense that it can be dismissed. Some perceptions are true because they tracked a fact. The line is about distortion, not about dissolving the world into mood. Keep a stubborn outer event (a blow, a law).

Drop one peg where it fits — not a data dump

Value addition

  • Art. 14 The file must not ‘see’ a type — equality as a washed pane.
  • Media / IT Rules A feed that projects; a duty to slow the portrait.
  • Police / prison Public perception as a portrait that can be earned — reform as washing khaki’s pane.

Last 8–10 lines in the exam

Last paragraph

  • Close: wash the pane you hold. Expand — this is only the map.

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