One Night @ The Call Centre
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When you are past thirty you have to ‘read books’ to know what is hip. Your fad sensors are past their usefulness or are oriented in a totally wrong direction. That was one of the reasons I picked up Chetan Bhagat’s book One Night @ The Call Centre on my last India trip, more than a year ago.
Call Center was a hitherto unpredicted socio-economic phenomenon. It escaped the heavily prophetic eye of Indian astrology. Most of the Indian horoscopes made 20-30 years ago failed to mention it as a career possibility, in the same way they ignored computer-programming. Yet thirty years hence more than half of urban India find themselves mysteriously morphed into programmers or call center employees. Call centers became the great levelers – giving the non-professional(-degreed?) youth the same take-home salary and dignity as their professional brethren, not to mention an American alias. Thus in the dead of the night (of Indian kind) when some become werewolves and others Mr.Hydes, Jaydeep Menons become Jake Murphies with questionable Texan accent.
I had crossed over to the forbidden territory (read America) when the first wave of calls reached India and had missed out on the whole hoopla. I left an India where people dragged around cell phones the size of microwave ovens to show they were ultra rich or uber cool. Today if I saw someone in a street corner in Delhi talking to himself, I’d probably rule out insanity and instead put the blame on an embedded micro Bluetooth cochlear implant.
One Night @ the Call Centre was bought as a one-stop shop for all my queries regarding call-centers, youth and pop-culture in the present day India. It starts out promisingly, providing me with the answers I have been looking for in simple English. I almost recommended this book to some of my American friends, till I came across some inflammatory anti-American talk.
You see, anti-American rhetoric is one of the easier ways to stay true to our socialistic roots. The US govt’s foreign policy tactics provides the shot in the arm whenever anti-american lobby looks like they are losing steam (that is another story.)
Who in their right minds have not bitched about their bosses? For the call center kids, their top boss is some guy(s) sitting in an office in Boston or LA running the big company that has transferred its call operations to India. If you are capable of looking at big picture, the boss is the US of A. But this logic is kind of hard to understand when you hear someone else blaming your country (your country = USA.) People take personal offence reading a few lines in a book of fiction, remember Khomeini’s fatwa on Salman Rushdie. My American friends are better of reading the exotic yet non-toxic Indian prose like Jhumpa Lahiri’s. Probably 'One Night...' is not a wise choice for a book recommendation.
The story gets pretty filmy towards the end – with emotions running high and omnipotent invisible beings making their presence felt - the kind favored in churches, mosques and temples. This book is sure to pass the Bollywood test. It has it all, the right mix of guys and girls in an urban setting (lots of foot-stomping songs), high drama, jingoism with power packed patriotic dialogs for instant gallery response (Sunny Deol is too old for the part though unless it is his home production.) In the hands of a good director, it has the no-fail formula for a Bollywood hit. We will have to see what Atul Agnihotri will cook up (The movie has been named Hello). Coming to the theaters near you this March it says.
Review: Easy breezy desi
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