Armed with the confidence of Navin, a state agriculture officer, his 25-year-old wife Dipali Navin Borade has now become a police sub-inspector.

Despite her success in the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) examination where two lakh students contested for a good two years, Dipali is not quite punching the air in delight. “I am happy, but not very happy,” says the mother of a four-year-old daughter.

“When I saw Dipali’s result on the Internet and told her about her success, she was pretty cool. She did not show any emotion. Probably, she was confident of her success,” says family friend Tejaswini Jadhav, who too is a housewife.

The reason why Dipali is not ecstatic is simple: she is aiming for higher things. “Becoming an SI is okay, but I want to become a deputy superintendent of police or will prefer other senior posts. I have already started preparations for the DSP examination,” says Dipali, a resident of Vishali Chaitanya Apartments, Kasarwadi.

A top post, argues Dipali, involves lots of power and this helps in taking decisive action in matters of public concern. “I am not belittling the SI’s post; I will take it up, but I am simply aiming high,” says Dipali.

The housewife, who went to a zilla parishad school in Donde village near Rajgurunagar, had spent around four hours everyday preparing for the examination. “In the morning, I got two hours to study; in the evenings I managed to steal another two hours. Actually, there were no fixed hours of study. Whenever I got time to study, I didn’t waste the opportunity.”

Dipali, who holds a Bachelor’s degree in Agriculture, says for the prelims and the mains she relied heavily on reading newspapers and books. “The biggest help came from my husband. Since he too had appeared for competitive exams, his notes came handy. Besides, I constantly interacted with him on various subjects and this helped me in my interview.”

The biggest shocker came during the physical test. “In the very first trial, a 200-metre run, I scored a blob out of 80. If a candidate scores a zero in the first test, there is no hope as he or she has to score 100 marks out of 120 in next two. I did not give up and I scored 105 marks out of 120 in the three-kilometre walk and the shotput test,” says Dipali.

And in these two years, Dipali had not neglected the household work or her four-year-old daughter. “She was upfront all the time,” says Navin.