उड़ने को पंख भी थे, ये भी भूल गए...

ऐसी आदत है हमें काम करने की 

कि उसी को सबकुछ बना लेते हैं,

उसी रट में लगे रहते हैं, उसी को ज़िन्दगी बना लेते हैं 

उसी से शिकायत है हमें

और फिर उसी पर जान न्योछावर,

काम काम नहीं होता 

अगर आदमी काम का नहीं होता  

I came across these lines while casually browsing through internet... and they reverberated deep in my heart for quite a long time. I kept pondering over these mainly because they left me introspecting...

Let me build a bit of background here first. I was always one of those people who had her life sorted since the beginning - getting good grades to get a decent college and then a job to make myself financially independent. I was, in simple terms, that cliched person who utters the words "working sincerely... giving my best...proving an asset" in interviews and then slogs the ass off to mean these words. But when I entered the corporate world and saw its ugly face, I realised the pretty picture I had in my mind was a mere illusion. The 'just out of college with her degree' me could not understand a few fundamental things plaguing the corporate culture -

1. How is sitting late a proof of efficiency? I mean, I could clearly see that a certain work can be finished in x hours but people will sit for (x+x) hours just to show that they are committed to the organisation, come on holidays, leave behind their families for work... I mean to say that I am not against working per se but it is the pretence of work that is beyond my comprehension and the fact that who have mastered this art are the star employees. And if I ever discussed this with anybody, I either got lectured on feminism or the fact that "kaam to aise hi hota hai..sab manage karte hain toh tum bhi karo, excuses mat do".

2. I don't know it's just the Finance department thing or a CA mindset thing but people will just NOT work till it's nearly the last day. I guess, the deadline pressure gives them a high or makes them more innovative? Not unless they pull all-nighters with all the free food and mugs of coffee/chai, shall the balance sheet be perfect.

3. Indian office culture is about making you feel guilty if you take a planned leave. Sometimes, taking a leave on a gazetted holiday (yes, you read it right!) will make you unreliable.

4. Don't even get me started on office politics for promotions and recognition. Even the thought makes me nauseous.

What's worse is that it is a never-ending loop. Everybody is doing it because their seniors did it. Anybody protesting against is the most useless employee.I don't know , it's either me who's wired not to fit into corporate culture or there's is something grossly wrong with the way we have made our lives centered around our work. My father cancelled a family trip for work and that's how I got the time to write this long-intended blog. See the irony?

Off late, I have been questioning my choice of field or the way I define success. True, I have a degree and a job that thousands of people aspire for...but if it is not making me happy, is giving me constant health problems, is changing my psyche and my behaviour; is it even worth? But then, if not this then what? From that sincere person who gave her one hundred percent in every endeavour, I have become that person who goes to work just for the paycheck, relegating to the backburner, that strong urge to do something unconventional at the back of my mind , day after day. That voice inside me that says live your dreams, grows feeble with each passing day because the reality is gnawing on the dreams like a hungry dementor. 

 The bitter truth remains that nobody seems to find this disturbing because most people think that this is not something that matters...  so I have stopped discussing this with anybody at all. Notwithstanding the fact that if what you do makes you unhappy and is altering the way you respond to everything, including yourself, this problem goes unnoticed. The only way I have come up with is to stop taking work/ office personally, minding my own business and focusing on personal growth and goals. It seems to be working so far. To conclude, I'd like to quote Nida Fazil - 

सफर में धूप तो होगी , जो चल सको तो चलो 

सभी हैं भीड़ में , तुम भी  निकल सको तो चलो 

किसी के रास्ते राहें कहाँ बदलती हैं 

तुम अपने आप को खुद ही बदल सको तो चलो |   

MAKE IT PART OF THE DANCE

As my audit assignment nears its end, I suddenly have copious amount of time to be back to my beloved blog and I thought of writing about my first full-fledged statutory audit which kept me super-busy for about 3 months and which I handled all on my own.

Let me first give a bit of background which would explain why writing about it is important to me.
A statutory auditor's job is to audit the financial statements of an entity and express his/her opinion on the accuracy and fairness of the same. Now to find about accuracy of something, one ought to know what the law and various statutes say about various things...and I am er...not very good at remembering all those sections and stuff...I know, as somebody who is soon going to be a CA, this is  something which could seriously jeopardize my prospects but that doesn't change the fact that I am as good at audit/law as Harry Potter was at potions. So when I was told that I was supposed to handle the statutory audit all on my own, I felt like it was the termination of my articleship because I would do a lousy job and the client would report that to my principal who would then chuck me out. It isn't that I hadn't done any statutory audit before but I hadn't done it ALONE...there is nothing that scares me in the world except a job entrusted to me and done wrongly (read imperfectly)...and so this audit assignment brought back my boggart of 'what if I go all wrong' back....I tried to make someone come along with me but in vain...I lay in my bed, sleepless, dreading the assignment...what if I do it all wrong? WHAT WOULD I DO IF I STUMBLE??

If you stumble, make it part of the dance. 

And I found myself treading the memory lane...class 3...I was forced to participate in a group dance competition by my house teacher...if there was anything I hated the most, it was dancing! on the first day of practice, I got scolded really bad which wasn't surprising because I really S.U.C.K.E.D. at dancing. I came back home in tears...when I told at home that I was scolded and didn't want to participate, my mother asked me the reason for the same. "I am scared that I will go wrong...that I will stumble and fall", I told her truthfully.
"If you stumble, make it part of the dance", she said smiling at me.
And all my fears vanquished.
There was no turning back after that. Not only did the teacher (who had scolded me on my first day of practice) acknowledge in front of whole house that I was doing the best in the group but our house stood II in the competition.

If you stumble, make it part of the dance, she had said.
The next morning, I informed my sir that I would be doing the assignment on my own.

And so I began.
But I didn't begin just like that. I was determined to do it with all my heart, to learn as much as possible and to give it my best shot. So I made a few things clear in my head before I dived in -
1. I would set daily targets & weekly targets and adhere to those at any cost.
2. I would aim for  5% improvement and not just take things as they were done the last year... that is when I leave, my work should be at least 5% better than my predecessor. 
3. I would do it not for the sake of doing it but because I truly, really, sincerely wish to learn something out of it.
4. I would try to be like my father - professional to the core.

So my new anthem became - 
If a task has once begun, never leave it till it's done.
Be the labor big or small, do it well or not at all.


The job was huge. There were a lot of companies, 20 contractors, a trust and finally a sole proprietorship that I had to audit. Then there was the tax audit u/s 44AB and also a report on transfer pricing to be prepared.
I began with the contractors. One by one, I finished the contractors...ledger scrutiny...their tax computation...their tax audit...
The companies...6 of them...CARO(Companies Auditor's Report order)...calculation of MAT(Minimum Alternate Tax)...computation of tax liability...tax audit u/s 44AB ...
The sole proprietorship...the biggest of them all! 
Finally the transfer pricing report.

I am sparing you all the technical details of all this, no need to thank me for that :P
For I am not writing this blog to feed you CA stuff but because I wanted to share my own experience of the adage - the best way is always through.  
Yes, I was hell scared of not being able to meet the deadline with all that work and my daily coaching alongside. 3months passed in whirls of time - I lost track of things, I was out of touch with most of the world. I was often so tired by the time I got back home that I had no time or the energy to exercise which took toll on my health. I got skin allergy because of the pollution and smoke that the factories emit out there 24x7. But none of this mattered because nothing in the world can compare to the happiness and high that a tallied balance sheet gives !!! Yes, there were mistakes but I was able to rectify them all and match the balance sheet on my own.  For the first time in my life, I was actually learning some real life application of what I always studied in the confined walls of my classroom and 'puked' out on answer sheets in the confined walls of examination center,..and all by myself.
The 'all by myself' part is highly significant.
It isn't that I was highly dependent on people around me; I could do my work decently but now that I have done the work myself, I have realized that it gave me a strange sense of freedom... It is easy to run to others but the freedom that standing and doing it on your own gives is ineffable...the confidence that it has instilled in me is probably one of those things that they say you don't realize was missing until it finally arrives. But the most important of all was that it reinforced what I was always taught as a child -

If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.

Turning back, I feet that the best way to overcome fear is to look at your own past experiences and realize that it was futile to have all these fears!

There is this funny incident that I would like to narrate...while doing one of the companies, I got stuck somewhere. No matter how much I tried, I just could not understand where I had gone wrong because not even my trial balance was tallying, forget the balance sheet ! So I had to ask my father. He could not find the mistake either but he commented that my work was LOUSY ! he said that it lacked proper format and that things were all haphazard in there! the comment pierced right through my vein like some bestial injection spreading indignation in my blood, not because he had commented but because he was unable to find the mistake in my work and yet conclude that it was lousy ! Like father, like daughter - I snatched away my pen drive out of the laptop and told him that I would speak to him only after I had corrected my mistake and tallied the balance sheet. He burst out laughing. I didn't take his call the whole day, worked hard and tallied the balance sheet and mailed him. I then called him up and he laughed again ! but after an hour or so, I got a mail from him with the subject 'improved balance sheet' and saw that he had made several changes that had nothing to do with the fundamentals and everything to do with the presentation of the balance sheet !  It is impossible to beat him at CA-ism :P :D

Moral : Anything that I've done that was ultimately worthwhile initially scared me to death...Life begins where your comfort zone ends.
P.S.
Because of this audit, I displeased a lot of people - I was unable to be a part of their birthday parties and I know that they all believe that I always try to weasel my way out as I am not very fond of social obligations but I swear, this time I was really going bonkers due to the workload...Although I can't deny that I enjoyed the hours that I spent doing the work more than I 'd have enjoyed sitting idly in some mall ! :P