One Night at the Call Centre - Chetan Bhagat

My tryst with Five Point Someone

I must say I had a good time reading Five Point Someone which was Chetan Bhagat’s first attempt at writing. And considering that it was his debut book, and the fact that he’s an alumnus of IIT-D and IIM-A and people who go such institutions are supposed to be the most intellectual and moronically pseudo people of the country- given all this, I felt FPS qualified as a very enjoyable reading for people like me and, going by the response, for millions of others too (FPS has been on the bestseller list consistently for some 75 weeks now).

I must say though, Bhagat seems to have a penchant for slightly weird names for his books. To the uncivilized mind, the name ‘One night @ the call centre’ can have such odd connotations…I mean, knowing the kind of stuff Bhagat put in the last time in FPS, I was hesitant to go buy the book fearing it would be something about…ahem ahem…you-know-what stuff. But thankfully the plot of the book is fairly clean and quite against my initial crazy ideas, I found that I couldn’t put the book down.

For exactly 5 hours and 3 minutes.

I know it sounds very clichéd and everything, but I really did complete the book in one stretch. This was one of the very rare cases when I’ve been able to do that. Not that it’s the best book that I’ve ever read, but it surely is one of the most absorbing books that I’ve come across recently.

what’s the plot like??

well…unlike some other reviewers, I don’t believe in letting out the entire plot. That’s for you to find out. So all I’ll try and do is inspire you to open the book and go through all of it. But, believe me, you don’t need no inspiration to go through this one… it’s so inviting anyway…

I shall tell you only as much as what’s given in the cover, cos that’s all you need to know to get you started. Hmmm… so the story goes like this-

There are these 6 people who have a lot of things in common:

1.They all work together in the same call centre at the same table.

2.There is nothing extraordinary about any of them.

3.All of them have successfully managed to get their lives screwed.

4.They all happen to be the main characters of our novel.

And then, when everything in their lives seems to be going downhill (to know why that word is in italics, read the book), they all get a phone call. Now, you’d ask what’s special about call centre employees getting a phone call, so the answer is that-

a) They don’t get a phone call at the call centre and b) the call is by none other than God himself. Now now now… don’t be an eternal skeptic and decide that any book with the word God is not meant for you…cos this one is, buddy it sure is.

beyond the plot

So, after having so many things common, it is but natural that someone would find our characters and write a story about their lives. This noble task was taken up, as you know by now, by meester Chetan Bhagat.

Each of the 6 characters is just so oh-that-guy/gal-stays-next-to-my-house types that you wouldn’t think of them as characters in a novel but as people you’ve met before and don’t hope of meeting again. In real life, you’d probably not look at them twice but here, Bhagat makes them out to be the true heroes of life.

in perspective

A few things noteworthy about the book are: its language, the plot, the characters, the resemblance with its predecessor and, lastly, the author.

The language is the chalta-phirta logon ka language, samjha kya? That is one of the many reasons that make the book so easy to read. In fact, in true Bhagat style, the longest and most difficult word in the book is ‘management’…arrey main to kehti hoon, reading the book is a child’s play- only, it’s not meant for children. There are certain @#% words and certain * situations that would send Sharmila Tagore running behind the author... So, the moral of the story is that if you’re planning to read the book to your younger sibling as a bedtime story, kindly censor the…er, offensive, parts a bit. Apart from that, everything’s perfectly suited to all ages.

The plot. Now, here’s a major doubt I have. Ever since I’ve read his previous work, I’ve been wondering where facts stop and fiction begins. Everything is so real life and the fact that Bhagat almost admits it to be taken from his experiences confuses me all the more…

The story is, yet again, narrated in first person (which I think is a brilliant form of expression). Then again, reminiscent of FPS, the author chooses to tell the story through a character who is the biggest loser of all, an underdog as we all deep down are. Then there is a deliberate resemblance in the characters as well. The main character Shyam here reminds one of Hari from FPS, Varun Malhotra a.k.a. Vroom is the Ryan of ON@TCC and Neha of FPS evolves into Priyanka here.

But the most important aspect is how the author brings up his personal ideologies through his characters. Chetan Bhagat says he identifies most with people like Hari and Shyam (hey! I jus realised that both these are the names of Krishna too) but there’s a side of his that’s burning to bring about a change in the existing system of society. Note how in FPS itself, he criticizes the IIT pattern of education and says there’ve been no attempts at research or progressive studies, that students simply choose to run madly behind the money offered from other countries, that IITs are actually not a boon to India but to countries like the U.S., that students are not taught to follow their dreams, that people become parasites under the IIT culture. He voices similar sentiments in his 2nd book. Only, this time he gets braver and openly talks about how dumb the Americans are and how all their policies are ‘sucking our blood’. Bhagat again displays his sense of love for the country and his understanding of the social evils bugging India presently.

To sum it up, one night @ the call center takes off where five point someone left. And at 95/- it’s a must have for those of wishing to spend a nice quiet evening with a book in your hands (although the book itself is anything but quiet…)

an important note