At 64, there is just one more year for me to retire. But enough is enough. More than 40 years in the firm. How long can I carry on, a senior executive with the famed Tata Consultancy Services. The bones ache, the joints creak, the body protests. The staff bonanzas never stop coming, week after week, month after month. For people like me, words and phrases like promotions, work-related bonuses, raise, stock options have ceased to make much meaning. Tell that to someone else, they burst out laughing!
I know it is only philosophers like Louis Agassiz who burst out laughing with the comment, “I cannot afford to waste my time making money” when offered a huge sum for a course in lectures. He has a point. As Ms Parker would say, “If you want to know what God thinks of money, look at the people he gives it to”. But in the present world, who believes in statements like ‘Put not your trust in money, but put your money on trust.’ One agrees with Voltaire, “When it is a question of money, everyone is of the same religion.”
Having been with the TCS for several long years, I can talk with some authority on the topic. In a nation where everything moves at a snail’s pace, the Diwali windfall for the 25 lakh employees of TCS arrived six months in advance. Much faster than Narendra Modi’s ‘development plans, which have made no headway! TCS, India’s biggest private sector software giant and top recruiter of women, is all ready to disburse a staggering special reward of Rs 2,628 crore, the biggest-ever bonus payout by an Indian company to its employees! The rest of India can only gasp “Wow!” What do the Fortune- and Forbes-listed tycoons have to say?
Where does this all this money come from? O, just consultation. What consultation? Don’t ask me. I don’t know. Even politicians do not know, though they are the ones who consult vigorously with one another all the time and the media too which reported this charcha. Quietly TCS moved in, did its consultancy and grabbed the profits. TCS has now completed 10 years of its listing on the Indian bourses. We can very well afford to offer one week’s salary for every year of completed service. The biggest beneficiaries of this scheme are senior employees, including CEO & MD Chandrashekharan and at a lower level people of my grade. You don’t know how quickly time flies while serving at the TCS. We carry the heavy bonus cheques home, deposit these in banks or other saving schemes, stretch ourselves and by that time, it is time for the next cheque to arrive. That is what I said at the beginning. Our cups floweth with joy, a situation which the Modis of this nation can never hope to achieve.
The Mumbai-based satirist is the creator of ‘Trishanku’; E-mail your secret diarist: vgangadhar70 [AT] gmail [DOT] com
