One night @ the call center is Chetan Bhagat’s second novel. Chetan Bhagat is an ’IIT-and-IIM’ graduate, working in a US-based investment bank in HongKong. His first novel Five Point Something turned out to be a national bestseller. It is about the life of the elite and enviable youth of the country: the IITians. In his second novel, Bhagat tried to cover the life of a new generation of youth that has emerged since the establishment of BPOs (call-centers) in the country. They are the so-called call-center agents, who work all night answering calls from customers overseas, mostly from the US. Most of them are in the prime of their life, in the age-group of 20-30, and according to the tone of the story, represents the modern youth of the country. That’s why Bhagat felt the imperative to write about their lives. However just like in Five Point Someone he dramatizes from the very beginning of the novel. He in his real self, is the narrator in the first chapter, traveling from Kanpur to Delhi in a lonely train compartment. Then suddenly walks in this pretty young lady who recognizes him as the author of the popular novel Five Point Someone . This lady lures him into listening to a story she has to tell about one night at a call center, on condition that he writes the story as his second book. From the second chapter, the author narrates the story of this one night, identifying himself with Shyam, a call-center agent.
There are seven main characters in the story : two boys Shyam and Vroom, three girls Esha, Radhika and Priyanka, an elderly person who the youths refer to as Military Uncle, all working as call-center agents. The seventh character, who is , sort of villain of the piece, is their grumpy, good-for-nothing, most uninspiring boss Bakshi. It is about that one special night at their workplace that transforms their life : their attitude and their outlook and each of them meets face to face with his/her true self. To start with, the youth characters are interesting on their own. Shyam is a typical struggling youth, always making compromises with everything, finding himself at the losing end of things. His boss usurps the credit of all the work he does, plays him like a puppet to meet his own needs, reducing his self-confidence and self-esteem. His personal life is also not in a good shape. He broke up with his ex-girlfriend Priyanka who happens to be his colleague as well. But he has lingering feelings for her. And what’s worse, her parents are planning to marry her off to a well-to-do, US-settled groom with a white collar job. Vroom is representative of a modern trendy youth, loves pizzas, mobiles and bikes, partying with girls. His parents are divorced and the reason he works at call-center is to get a salary that would help him keep up with his lavish life-style. After all, bikes, pizzas and cellphones all come at a cost. But in heart he dislikes the call-center job and wishes he were worthy of something more useful than helping out foreigners with problems that a person with an average IQ can figure out by himself. Esha wants to be in the glam world : a successful model, but her short height comes in the way. Though she makes some immoral compromises to make it big, it does not work out. The glamour however is too luring for her and she places her struggle to be a model above everything else , even without exploring whether that is what she really wants. Radhika is a sincere housewife, who devotes herself to the service of her in-laws during the day time and works at the call-center at night to make a living. She says she is attached to her husband and in-laws and that she is happy making almond-milk for her mother-in-law who is always complaining about her to her husband. Priyanka is Shyam’s ex-girlfriend, they still have feelings for each other. They were very happy with each other, but then broke up due to some filmsy reasons, perhaps unable to bear the pressure that Priyanka’s mother puts on her to get a good well-settled match for her. Her mother absolutely loathes Shyam whom she calls a ’loser’ and is eager to marry off Priyanka to this US-settled groom. Priyanka has agreed to the proposal but she is not fully sure. She distributes sweets among her colleagues to break this news but when her mother suggests the idea of getting her married to the same groom the very next month, she is hesitant. Military Uncle is perhaps the least spoken character in the story but the reader finds out that even he has a conflict in his life.
All the characters of the call-center agents have a conflict which sort of sets the story in motion. Some of them like Priyanka and Shyam, or Vroom and Esha have open conflicts with each other in the course of the story but there’s a bigger conflict in each of them : a conflict within their inner self. They all seem to be wearing a mask that hid the real person in them. And then that one night when they get a call from God, that mask is unveiled and they discover their true self. God represents their inner voice : a voice to which people seldom listen these days. It is the voice which gives them the wake-up call : to wake up from the trance that their life is and transform it and be the person each of them is.
The book unveils the reality of the modern era of call-centers. Call-centers or business process outsourcing centers have taken over the country in the span of the last few years. These are cheap labor centers for the foreign companies. But when converted to Indian currency, it translates into a decent paycheck for the Indian youth who man the helplines for the foreign customers. Lured by the promise of a decent salary, these young agents stay up all night, often at the cost of their own health, to serve the foreigners who are rude and insensitive and hurl racist abuses at them. The novel depicts the difficult situation that these young men and women of our country find themselves in. On one hand they are under pressure to meet the demands of their personal life and career, on the other hand they are burdened by the pressure from their families. Being unable to cope with this external stress, they simply resign to their fate and let their lives into the hands of their ruthless and inefficient bosses like Bakshi who exploit them to the end of the world, take advantage of them at every opportunity and mindlessly ’fire’ them when it comes to ’rightsize’ the working force to save money. In the process, these young people forget about their own needs and ambitions, who they are and what they really want. Some of them are talented enough to pursue their own dreams and contribute to the nation and the society. But in this pressing situation, they forget about those dreams. It is only their inner voice : call it God’s voice or call it the call of the conscience, that can revive those dreams.
Bhagat’s use of simple spoken English makes it easy reading. But I did find some of the details a bit dragging. Just like in Five Point Someone the author has a propensity to dramatize things and draw a happy ending which makes his book popular and amenable to making a Bollywood style movie out of it. There is a little drama in the end with Shyam and Priyanka getting back with each other which seems to be a direct Bollywood flick. There is a needless scorn directed towards Americans who are portrayed as unintelligent spoon-fed human beings. But I do have to compliment Bhagat on taking up a very contemporary issue as the subject of his book and trying to present some insightful pictures of the reality to the readers.