Most people across the state must be finding it amusing that the Government of Assam is reportedly working on rescheduling the office timing of its employees. While the present daily time-schedule in the Government of Assam offices provides for an employee to reach office by 9:30 am and stay on till 5 pm, the common citizen knows it well that a sizeable section of the government employees neither land up in office at 9:30 am, nor do they stay on till 5 pm every working day. There is this general complaint that government employees either come late or leave early, some practice both, with the some of them reportedly saying that maintaining at least one timing itself is difficult in these days of traffic jams, bandhs and blockades. And then, there is this great disappearance act that Government of Assam employees have always excelled in, putting citizens coming for various kinds of official work from distant places in far-flung districts like Dhemaji, Dima Hasao and Karimganj in great discomfort. There was this common joke when the Assam capital was located in Shillong that babus – as the clerks used to be then called because of the British legacy and the large number of Sylheti Bengalis the foreign rulers had employed in the Assam Secretariat – would soon disappear from their offices after arrival, to attend to various personal issues, leaving behind their coats on the back-rest of their chairs. Any visitor to the office was thus given an impression that since the coat is majestically placed on the back of the chair, the babu must be definitely around somewhere in the office campus itself! While it has been nearly five decades now that the Assam capital has come down from Shillong to Dispur, our present-day Dispuriya babus have somehow managed to carry forward the glorious tradition of disappearance from office during office hours, much to the discomfort and difficulty caused to the common citizen. Thus, citizens across Assam must be wondering why the government of Assam is at present reportedly working on revising the office working hours from the existing ‘9:30 am to 5 pm’ schedule to a new ‘9-to-6’ schedule, especially because that would only extend the ‘disappearing time’ of the Dispuriya babus from what it is today.