Unable to get response back from chainlink node using truffle console

Question

I am trying to fetch close prices of a property deployed on a server running on a chainlink node. Here's what a snippet from my contract (RealEstateAPIConsumer.sol) looks like :

function returnClosePrice(string memory _name) public {
    Chainlink.Request memory request = buildChainlinkRequest(jobId, address(this), this.myCallback.selector);
    request.add("name", _name);
    request.add("copyPath", "closePrice");
    receipts[sendChainlinkRequestTo(oracle, request, fee)] = stringToBytes32(_name);
}

function myCallback(bytes32 _requestId, uint256 _price) public recordChainlinkFulfillment(_requestId){
    tokenHash = receipts[_requestId];
    delete receipts[_requestId];
    currentRealEstatePrice[tokenHash] = _price;
    latestRequestId = _requestId;
    price = _price;
}

The contract on etherscan

The contract is deployed on a kovan infura node. When I invoke the truffle console with:

await instance.returnClosePrice("Mannat")

my terminal becomes unresponsive and there's no response coming from the node.

Here's what my migration file looks like:

var RealEstateAPIConsumer = artifacts.require('RealEstateAPIConsumer')
module.exports = function(deployer){
  deployer.deploy(RealEstateAPIConsumer)
}

Here's what my truffle-config looks like:

require('dotenv').config()
const HDWalletProvider = require('@truffle/hdwallet-provider');
const kovanUrl = process.env.KOVAN_URL;
const fs = require('fs');
const mnemonic = fs.readFileSync(".secret").toString().trim();
const NonceTrackerSubprovider = require("web3-provider-engine/subproviders/nonce-tracker")

module.exports = {
  networks: {
    development: {
      host: "localhost",
      port: 7545,
      network_id: "5777"
    },
    kovan: {
      provider: function() {
        var wallet = new HDWalletProvider(mnemonic, kovanUrl);
        var nonceTracker = new NonceTrackerSubprovider()
        wallet.engine._providers.unshift(nonceTracker)
        nonceTracker.setEngine(wallet.engine)
        return wallet
      },
      network_id: 42
    }
  },
  mocha: {
  },
  compilers: {
    solc: {
      version: "0.6.6",
    },
  },
};

Can anyone throw some light into the issue as to why it might be happening (this works fine on Remix. Only truffle console seems to cause issues) ?