The word 'Bench' is the lingo used in the Indian IT industry that represents the phenomenon in which an individual is not working in any project and idles out the entire office hours. The term may have been inspired and coined by looking at the idle people sitting in benches kept in parks. I believe that two facts, (i)there are plenty of parks in Bangalore and (ii)Bangalore is the IT capital of India, support my hypothesis strongly.

Typical activities that one involves in while he/she is in bench ranges from surfing through the net to chatting with fellow benchers to playing carom/TT/billiards. In short, a bencher is a 'Non Performing Asset' for the company who is retained (read 'paid') in the hope that a project may soon come and he/she can start heads-on in the new project.

All through my career, I had envied people who were in bench and chilling out all time when we used to work for long hours in a project . Well, at least that's what I thought at the time - that they are chilling out.

But after experiencing the bench factor for a few weeks now, I have realised how difficult it is to be in bench for more than a week. You feel great in the first week; you can come and go at any time, need not worry about any delivery and play as long as you wish. Everything changes gradually from the second week onwards - you are really concerned that you should not go late to the office because you are in bench and you don't want people to think that you are taking it lightly; you become conscious when you play thinking that there is somebody out there watching you all the time. You can't even sit in your place and do something peaceful; so-called billed people come and ask 'Having a blast, buddy???'. And finally comes the worst - glancing at your watch everyday as it ticks past slowly and shows 6 p.m. - it's the nation-wide accepted ideal time for a bencher to leave the office.

Time management is something that we all wish to master but there is something that we should all know as well - Time killing for weeks together at a constant rate of 9 hours a day. If I sound frustrated or philosophical, well it's because of the power of bench factor.