Paternity Policy

I work with an Indian conglomerate (we like to call ourselves a business federation) and my wife works with the Indian arm of a British telecom giant (no prizes for guessing) that recently upped its maternity leave policy from 3 months to 4 months and 6 hour work days for 6 months after resumption of work. 

My plan was always to use some of the countless privilege leaves that I have accumulated over the past 6 years. The possibility of getting leave and getting paid for having unprotected intercourse had not crossed my mind earlier.

But this news of an added month of maternity leave got me wondering what the paternity policy of my company was. So I went to the company's intranet and dug out the policy. I was wishfully hoping for two weeks and quite reasonably expecting at least one full week of paternity leave.

So you can imagine my joy when the policy in front of my eyes read 2 days. Two full days! Two full effing days! Can you believe it? My joy knew no bounds when I read the next sentence. For 3 months before the birth of my child and for 3 months after it, I was allowed to work 2 days from home every month. My reaction after running this past my boss and getting his acquiescence on the whole thing was like this:

Here's to paternity and office policies.