WARNING : All the views presented below are fictitious and any resemblance to me is a CRIME. Believe me I DO WORK IN OFFICE.
Bench, yes you rightly thought, here I am referring to the famed IT industry bench which has always been associated with frustration and monotony. It is partly true, but there is a lot more to the bench as I discovered when I was part of it. And this is what I share with you.
To start with, I don't see bench as a single word rather it seems to me as an acronym whose full form is "Bachelor ENjoying Cashed Holiday". It’s a paid holiday package from your company where you are asked to do nothing and you are paid for the same i.e. doing nothing.
As Newton said in his third law, Every effect has a side effect and so has the bench. Let’s discuss those side effects one by one.
Side effect no 1.I am now a days popularly known among my friends as the yellow page guy. No not because I started wearing yellow pages, the title has come to me thanks to my brain's search engine. Be it home loan queries, tax queries ,credit card queries, good food joints, lonely places for couples in and around city and I have the answer. If I don’t have the answer at that moment then I am always ready with my ready-made voicing message "We are pleased to receive your query. We would answer your query in the next 3 googling hours , please bear with us."
Side effect no 2
If you have a creative hand, then these are the software for you - Flash and Adobe Photo Shop . Install them and you will find doors of a world of creativity opening for you. Experiment as much as you can and send it to all your friends specially to those friends who are girl by their species. These will bring you all the applause though sometimes it could bring you abuse too. It happened with me when I morphed my friend's(girl species) face with a picture of a mother holding a kid. So here a word of caution don't be too creative and if you are in I-Can't-help-it sort of situation then atleast dont mail around your hyper-creativity.
Side effect no 3
All the bachelors can be broadly divided into two main categories 1)Engaged 2)Ready to be engaged. Now if are in the lucky first category then you are blessed if you are on the bench since you have a huge amount of time. You can reach the restaurant 15 minutes earlier and wait for her (atleast keep 2-3 empty cups of coffee and 3-4 plucked roses on table for documentry proof) and later you can easily make her realise that reaching early and waiting is not a great thing and this does not give any kind of proof of love. This will atleast save you from all the scoldings in future meetings where you would be certainly late. Now if you fall in much crowded second category then this is the right time. Girls require only two things from you - time and money. Money you already had and now you have time too.You can attract your first love or search for second love or achieve your lost love.
And finally to summarize the whole idea of side effect in the words of a Tele Brand Ad : "Pahle bahut paresan rahta tha.Apni girl friend ko time nahi de pata tha ,Rahul use time de raha tha.Par thank you bench ,bench ne meri zindagi badal dee .Ab main na sirf apni balki Rahul ki girl friend ko bhi time de raha hoon.nahi nahi main apne dosto ko koi aur salah nahi dunga,sirf bench hi use kare "
Somebody rightly said once "hajar marj ki dawa , subah aur saam - bench ki hawa"
Happy benching!
