The Happiness in earning a negligible Stipend! :P

“So how much are they going to pay you?” a friend asked me the day I joined office. This question made me realize I actually did not know how much they were going to pay me.                                        

“I don’t know I never asked them, stipend is the last thing I am concerned about. I am joining there to learn, to gain as much knowledge and experience as possible.” 

1 year later:

You lose Rs 100 per day per leave.
Our response :You can keep our whole stipend. Jitna toh dete ho! Huh!

At the client's office:

Client : So how much are they paying you??      

Me: Negligible!!

He laughs and says “I know that is why I did not join CA .”

Me: What?You did not join CA because of the articleship stipend??

Again he laughs his unique ahahahhah :\  

Client: No, I did not like the idea of being slogged and tortured for free for more than 3 years in the name of articleship and then appear for exams which you are not even certain of passing, so I pursued CFA. I did not wish to become bald doing CA.

His face at this moment reminded me of a "winking smiley" and my mind started racing did he mean that I would be bald by the time I become a CA? This was seriously the last thing I wanted to talk about early in the morning.

I smile and tell him "you are smart."

But the smart guy was not smart enough to realize that I am not blind, I could see even CFA had turned him bald. ;)

                        Initially stipend meant nothing even the first pay check could not cast any magical charm. Not till I got addicted to bournville and silk. A chocolate a day keeps stress away ;) Work helped me earn both stress and stipend. Stipend should be used to reduce stress. Simple logic!  Who would sponsor the weekend parties?? Had it not been the stipend? Well weekend parties are again stress reduction techniques and follow the same logic. With the amount of stipend we get one weekend party per month is at times difficult. At times even our travelling expenses are double the amount of what we get (thanks to the petrol prices!). Sigh!  

         And then for people like me who can actually hear a pair of shoes at a mall talking to them, begging them to take them and how lovely they would look on their feet!  Then there are people like my mom who would say “listen to the shoes already at home, they might feel neglected!” And who comes to save the poor shoes at the mall and fulfills their wish??Stipend! :D  And no matter how many shoes I buy I still don’t have anything to wear.  My shoes even ask me to get them a matching bag. To some extent stipend helps in satisfying all the unnecessary greed for shoes bags and what not!! ;) And obviously we cannot ignore our monthly phone charges. Thanks to stipend your parents know you don't waste time unnecessarily on phone. 

                                    One fine morning in the mid of a month I call up an office friend “Hey I was planning to colour up my hair this week sometime, maybe in the weekend. Even you wanted to colour up..so what say? This Sunday? "

She: yea I wanted to, but not possible this month. Stipend has still not been credited in our account and I have not paid my room rent yet!

Me: What the hell? Its already 15^th! No stipend! Are these people crazy?

She: Fund shortage maybe..!

Me: Then why make us work? We can stay at home they don’t have to pay us. 

                                       Back to the window shopping days. And to make it worse I have friends in other firms who would offer an ice cream and when I refuse “Yaar pata hai tum logon ko stipend nahi mili, you don’t have to pay. They make you slog for free. Sad!!.”  And then someday I get a message from a colleague “INSTIGATE all the articles we need to revolt.”  As if anyone is going to listen.These were the days when we would sit sipping a coffee at Cafe coffee day and wonder how life would be if our articleship gets extended, and a chorus reply to the thought "why not work as a waitress here?"This would definitely be a better thing to do.Morever a daily wage labourer earns more than us.   

                                     But trust me stipend really does not mean anything to us. We were here to learn, to gain experience. And this is what we have learnt from our experience nobody likes to get slogged for free. :P  Whatever meagre amount they pay me I don’t get it, I EARN it.