70 on 74 — is another mildly interesting statistic that this former student of Dhirubhai Ambani is trying to shrug off, and would love to forget. To get on with the trigger-happy life she has chosen for herself. Save four, all of Upasana’s other classmates from school, enrolled into universities abroad and often mail back tales from their fancy campuses. The 19-year-old who bucked the trend and dumped her admission to a management programme at Warwick - decided to trek up to Dehradun instead, loaded with pellets.

“It’s a risk I was willing to take on my academics, because you don’t get a coach of Jaspal Rana’s calibre out there,” she says of the voluntary slip to education in UK. What started as a hobby three years ago, is now a serious career path, and her first gold medal at the national-level has put all nagging doubts at rest.

“At times when I’m down in the dumps and the shooting scores are not as good, I think of SAT exams and the campus that could have been,” Upasana says, quickly adding, “But no regrets - I can always finish my post-grads there.”

Staying five minutes away from the MRA range at Worli, Upasana wasn’t really stretched to motivate herself - she could simply walk in and practice at any allotted time of the day. But trigger-happy to the point of being impatient, she couldn’t wait to start firing the shots and believes that’s why she side-stepped the rifle and picked the pistol instead.

“It’s the 30-45 minutes extra of strapping up the gear in rifle which I don’t fancy. But a pistol - you can carry it around in the belt easily, and just shoot. The thrill is in the spontaneity,” she explains of her choice of weapon, which has been in the shadow of the more distinguished rifle in Maharashtra. “We’ve had Sheela Kanungo who was a champion, and I trained under her when I started, but rifle’s the more popular one here,” Upasana maintains.