Aal Izz Well, Aal Izz Well !!

One more year is nearing its end. Once again there is this excited wait for the New Year. This is my second New Year with this company. Last year as an internship trainee, I had almost celebrated the New Year here in office itself. Well, I said almost because we left office at 11:30 PM and I was still in the train when the hands passed over 12 in the clock. Still it was better than my last b’day when I was in office till 4:00 AM. I wish I can leave office somewhere in the evening this 31st.

It may sound weird and then impossible (especially in my company), but my New Year resolution (about professional life) is to bring down my Average Working Hours from 12 to 9. Parents feel bad that I spend more than 14 hours away from home. My November salary slip says my AWH is 11:59 hours. It felt good to see that “11” instead of 12.

I generally reach home by 12:00 or 1:00 at midnight. I eat alone in the kitchen quietly, not wanting to wake up the other (sane) members of my family. Next morning I fight a war with time to catch the 10:17 local, which is the last hope for me to reach office before 11:15 AM.

After the first two times I got half day remarks, I started coming directly at 1:55 PM every time I was sure of getting a half day. After 2:00 PM you are marked absent. Well, it really feels dumb to get late by 5 seconds or a minute, work for 13 hours 20 minutes on the same day and lose half a day of leave. I wonder if the salary of half a day can be cut for coming later than 11:15 then why isn’t the same amount credited for working overtime.

Thankfully my balanced leave are still in positive. But that’s another problem. Since the first week of December, I’m wondering when I will finish these. Well looking at long list of new developments for my project, I did not apply for leave. These 9 pending leave weren’t less for me that 3 more complementary off`s got added for working on Sundays. Well I’m still consoling myself saying that my situation is good compared to a few colleagues who have 6 or more leave surplus to the limit of 18 leave which get carry forwarded to next year. If we are burdened with so much of work that we don’t even get to finish our quota of 24 paid leave then why aren’t the surplus leave allowed to be redeemed in cash?

I had found a solution to this pending leave problem. I had started coming half day. This way I was finishing my leave and work both. But this method looked foolish as I realised that working for more than 9 hours on your half day is not a good option.

Yesterday I learned this new word, Perquisite. I was reading a news article in TOI. It said that IT dept. (read as Income Tax) is planning to also tax the perquisites given to employees. I wondered if the Parle-G or the saw dust (Neutrine Choice) I order for snacks every evening will be taxable too. I was discussing this term, perquisites, with my friends from the same industry. One of them sighed and said that he doesn’t have this evening snack funda at his company. What merely he gets is a Medi Claim or occasionally (say bimonthly), things like tickets from the clients for stupid movies.

Another friend was proudly telling about his 5 days week. Yes, he has all Saturday’s off. His company has US based clients. I tried finding solace thinking that most of the clients for my company are from UK or Australia.

Everyone around me nowadays is excited/ tensed about appraisals. Everyone is hoping for good increase in salary this time. May be I’m being a monk and not keeping any expectations. I just sometimes, when at home, open my offer letter and read the line where it is written that I’ll be getting an assured bonus (the word assured looks good to my eyes).

I’m getting this weird feeling inside. All I could think of doing is patting my chest and say, “Aal Izz Well, Aal Izz Well”.^*

Hey! It kicked me inside the tummy. No it’s not what you are thinking. It’s just that its 4:00 in the morning and I’m simply waiting for this upload to be done on the live site. It might be that I’m hungry again or maybe it’s the leg piece of the chicken tandoori, we ordered for dinner, which is upset.

P.S. Please take this as a pure work of fiction.

* The lyrics are copyrighted with 3 idiots, a Vidhu Vinod Chopra production.