The Accountant, the venture capitalist, the housewife and the actress!

It was a typical day in a mofussil accountant’s life. I had to handle the first-time tax returns of an elderly couple who had a windfall thanks to the real estate prices.

Filing returns for the first time is a complex process. You will have to create a log-in ID for the client at the Income Tax Website.

That in itself could be complicated because of the first-name last-name confusion we have in India.

Then you should download the correct return form along with the return preparation software from the site. If its mere salary and interest income then it is ITR1, if its house property income as well then it’s ITR 2 and so on.

You should have prepared a statement of income and should have computed the tax beforehand. And should have paid the tax even before that process, based on the estimate.

Then you fill up the form validate it to check for any omissions and errors and then convert it into an XML file.

You would do better to glance at the xml file to check the major particulars, especially the year, the bank account number (otherwise you cannot encash your tax refund cheque as the account number printed on the cheque will be wrong) and the tax paid details.

Then you log into the site and upload the return, get the acknowledgement in a password protected pdf file, open it, have it signed by the client and then send it by post to the Centralized Processing Centre at Bangalore.

As I was doing the process with utmost concentration I cannot help thinking about my college-mate who is also a chartered accountant.

He heads one of the Gulf’s largest venture capital firms. With the same amount of work which I did today he would have cleared a project making a value-add of several millions to his employers.

I also made a value-add to my firm but it was in just thousands. For venture capitalists the stakes are quite high. But when it comes to skill and complexity there is not much of a difference.

And I am confident that a good accountant’s skillsets is no less than those of a heart surgeon.

And that a good plumber is not in any way less skilled than the accountant or the surgeon.

While the skills required are almost the same one person can add millions in terms of value (and thus earn in millions as well) while the other can hope to add and earn only in terms of thousands.

The plumber who came to our house on the other day to fix a water block turned out the same quality of work I did; and yet he could earn only in hundreds while I was silently making my thousands.

A housewife with school going kids is turning out much more valuable work than a cine actress who does a 12 hour schedule on a hot summer day.

While the actress is paid in millions and she hogs the limelight all the time, the housewife remains an unpaid and unsung heroine.

The housewife and the mofussil accountant are in the same boat along with the plumber and the electrician.

Many years ago I was talking to a Master Printer in Madurai. Those were pre-DTP days, pre-computer days. This man used to turn out excellent work with a mini offset printer and a few treadle presses.

Books, annual reports, wedding invitations.. name anything you could see quality in them.

He used to handle all the prestigious printing work in the city. I asked him what work did he value the most.

The old man affectionately patted on my shoulders.

“Everything’s the same, Sridhar. Whether you design a visiting card or print a million dollar multi-colour poster for a political party, the skill and dedication I bring to the table is the same.

"And if you calculate the skill and sincerity per square centimetre of output, I’m afraid that the visiting card work will come first. What you do is not important at all; how you do it is.”

Once one of the ladies handling the recipes section here in IL complained to me that she was being looked down upon by intellectuals who were in the Good To Read section at that time.

My defence for the lady was simple:

“Preparing a first rate soup is a million times better than writing a third rate poetry.”

Osho says that you can be very creative while sweeping the floor and can be totally uncreative while writing an epic poem.

What do we do for a living is not in our hands. But how we do it surely is. You may be a mofussil accountant like me or a housewife.

Your happiness depends not on what you do but how you do it. Remember that there are as many happy accountants and happy housewives as there are unhappy venture capitalists and unhappy actresses.

At the end of the day happiness alone matters.

Thank God, that’s still in our hands.

Have a great week ahead.