Swami came into the café looking like a faded version of himself. His shoulders drooped, his face was drawn, and he sank into the chair opposite me without a word.
“What happened?” I asked. “You look like Raichand cancelled Diwali.”
“Worse,” Swami said quietly. “No performance bonus this year.”
“None at all?”
“None. At least not for our business unit,” he said. “Other divisions got theirs. We grew more than the others. Still below target. Our targets were higher. So, zilch for us.”
“Oh, is that how it works? Grow more but still underperform? Funny!” I remarked.
“That’s the sad part. People are posting happy messages, thanking bosses, talking about plans with the extra money. And us? Nothing. We have to sit with our ‘non-performance’.”
He paused, fiddling with the edge of the menu card. “It’s not that I desperately need it. Vidya reminded me we’re doing fine without it. But still…” He shook his head slowly. “It feels bad.”
Just then, Jigneshbhai arrived, smiling as though the weather had been made to his order. He greeted us, settled down, and placed his coffee order. Then he turned to Swami with his usual calm curiosity.
“You look unusually quiet today,” he said.
Swami exhaled. “No performance bonus.”
Jigneshbhai nodded. “For you? I thought you said your unit was growing well?”
“Yes, it did. But still below target. That means no performance bonus. For our whole unit,” Swami clarified. “The others got it. We didn’t. Same company, different treatment.”
“Hmm.. that’s bad. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, isn’t it?” Jigneshbhai asked gently.
“I guess so,” Swami said. “Raichand should have negotiated our targets better,” he added.
“He must have been confident of meeting them,” Jigneshbhai remarked.
“And here we find ourselves because of that,” Swami’s voice was morose. “With no cash.”
“Well, it’s not as if you were dying for that cash, isn’t it?” Jigneshbhai got to the root of the matter.
“That’s true. Not as if I can’t manage without it. But because it makes me feel… less valued. Like our work doesn’t matter. Like we’re invisible. Non-performers.”
Jigneshbhai stirred his coffee when it arrived, letting the silence hang for a few seconds.
“Hmm,” he said finally. “True. It’s never just money. It is symbolic.”
Swami frowned. “I don’t know what it is. All I know is, it feels rotten to watch others celebrate while you sit empty-handed.”
Jigneshbhai leaned back. “Let me ask you something. Well, you still have your salary, and everything else…”
“What does that have to do with my performance bonus?” Swami interjected.
“Of course, True – nothing,” Jigneshbhai said, nodding. “But tell me — if the company had given you the bonus, would you have remembered it after two months?”
Swami thought for a moment. “Probably not.”
“And yet, because you didn’t get it, you’ll remember it for a whole year.” Jigneshbhai smiled faintly. “Strange how absence weighs more than presence.”
Swami rubbed his forehead. “So, what are you saying? That I should just forget it?”
“No,” Jigneshbhai said calmly. “I’m saying don’t measure your happiness in payouts. They’re numbers. Here today, gone tomorrow. Why give them control?”
That thought seemed to sink into Swami’s mind, though he didn’t say anything. He kept looking at the coffee cup in his hand, as though it held some deeper answer.
Swami sighed, a half-smile tugging at his lips. “Still, I wouldn’t have minded a small deposit this year,” he muttered.
Jigneshbhai chuckled softly. I nodded, sipping my coffee. Swami sat back, no longer slumped, but not quite smiling either.
***
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