Bhagat, Chetan;
One Night at the Call Centre
Black Swan, 2007, 318 pages
ISBN 0552773867, 9780552773867
topics: | fiction | indian-english |
In 2004, Chetan Bhagat came to IIT for a lecture. Five Point Someone had just come out, and the large hall was full. The essence of what Bhagat said was that best-sellers must be planned. One has to see what plot will appeal to what audience, and work on making it interesting to a large audieence. Chetan has been trying to attract the younger crowd - who are also the more English literate readers. His novels address the aspirations and motivations of these young readers, and make little connection with the phoren literary critic.
Bhagat said that in India, sales of 1000 for a novel is breakeven. Most novels sell about 2000 copies. Five point Someone sold 50,000 in two months, he said then; it went on to sell more than a million copies, a record for English novels in India. To make a novel a best-seller, Bhagat carefully mixes the ingredients. One factoid he mentioned was that Males think about sex every 11 seconds. A deeper observation was that good stories must touch the darkest corners of your heart. - What makes you ashamed of yourself? - What makes you angry? - What makes you laugh? It is important to share your own shortcomings - it will draw in the listener. The aim is to make my heart connect to your heart. Also, Bhagat believes in giving his books an inspirational, positive slant. Certainly, One Night is no exception. Finally, it helps that prices are kept low. In his 2004 talk, Bhagat was proud that they were able to market Five Point at under Rs.100. Even today, the price is still very affordable at slightyly above a hundred rupees.
In the book he refers to this talk at IIT Kanpur; apparently it was on his way to Delhi in the night train that he met a call-center employee, an attractive woman who tells him the story after making him promise to write up the tale... The book hit a nerve. India's millions of English-educated youth wanted upbeat, inspirational stories that related to their lives. English education in India has spread far more in recent years than in colonial times. An article in 2005 by the business columnist Sucheta Dalal said that among two professionals with comparable background and experience, the one who was able to speak English earned a salary as much as four to five times higher than the other who did not speak English. BPOs and the economics of English Consequently, parents work hard to get their children educated at elite English-medium schools. As of 2012, there were more than 20 million Indian kids studying at such schools. For the millions of such people, IITs remain aspirational, since very few youth get to study there. Many tens of thousands more end up at the call-centers, where the pay is good, as this book repeatedly underlines. When One Night # the call center came out - later in 2004 - it was an even bigger success than five point someone. As of 2013, it had sold 2.5 million copies [Southmayd 13]. In an extended analysis of the popular "pulp fiction", the sociologist Stephanie Southmayd of U. Toronto, writing in Postcolonial Text (2013) describes how this novel's runaway success created a sub-genre of the call-centre-lit, with books such as Once Upon a Timezone_ (Neelesh Misra, 2006), Piece of Cake (Swati Kaushal, 2004), and Brinda Narayan’s Bangalore Calling (2011). But the book also appeals to other, less fluent speakers of English. In an interview, Bhagat makes the ambitious claim: My competition is apps like Candy Crush or WhatsApp... I don't see other writers as my competition at all. I want a share of people's minds. I have to wean them off YouTube, movies and apps. I have to make them interested in books. India Today 2014 aug It is possible for Bhagat to make such claims because more than any other single author, has energized English fiction readership in India.
Another aspect of Bhagat's story is that being Indian should be a matter of pride. Despite our shortcomings today, we are on our way to build a great nation. Vroom, a character in One night (agent name Victor Mell), wants to work in areas that will show India's potential to the world- he wants to "build roads, power plants, airports, phone networks, metro trains." Such sensitive souls are of course troubled when the foreign caller, starting with a problem affecting the vacuum cleaner, goes on to say: 'Tell me your name. You're some kid in India, ain't ya, boy?' 'Yes, sir. I am in India.' 'So what did you have to do to get this job? Degree in nuclear physics?' 'Sir, do you need help with your cleaner or not?' 'C'mon, son, answer me. I don't need your help. Yeah, I'll change the dust bag. What about you guys? When will you change your dusty country?' 58 Vroom has quite a fit after this. In connection with the neutralization of the colonial status of English argued by Southmayd, it is interesting to note that an early version of the book had a scene where the protagonist Shyam (Sam to American callers) sees a group of new inductees being trained: ‘Remember,’ the instructor said to the class, ‘a thirty-five-year-old American’s brain and IQ is the same as a ten-year-old Indian’s brain. This will help you understand your clients… Americans are dumb, just accept it…’ Interestingly, this passage was dropped in later versions, that were aimed possibly at a more international readership. On the whole, the book is an easy read. The story ends on too positive a note with a false rumour being spread by the company's call center to boost service calls - it is not clear how such backhanded tactics can be inspirational.
The plot is completely over the top, with everyone ending up where they wanted to be, in terms of their work and romance. No wonder literary critics have stayed away. It is more Horatio Alger than Aldous Huxley, but the characters are believingly delineated, and the pages turn effortlessly. Bhagat makes it clear that he has no ambition of writing a literary work - he just wants his authorial voice to be heard. And this he has achieved more than any one else.
Bakshi was about thirty but looked forty and behaved as if he was fifty. 25
When girls call a guy 'teddy bear', they just menn he's a nice guy
but they'd never be attracted to him. Girls may say they like such
guys, but teddy bears never get to sleep with anyone. 30
'And anyway, it's the girl who always gets to choose. Men propose and women
accept or, as in many cases, reject it.'
...
It's true. Girls go around rejecting men like it's their birthright. They
have no idea how much it hurts us. 33
a family was led to the table adjacent to us. The family consisted of a young
married couple, their two little daughters and an old lady. The daughters
were twins, probably four years old. The entire family had morose faces and
no one said a word to each other. I wondered why they had bothered to go out
when they could be grumpy for free at home. 39
--Want to be Happy or Thin?--
'Eat, stupid. Do you want to be happy or thin'?' I said, pushing her
plate back towards her.
'Thin.' 40
We stood up to leave and the grumpy family's voices reached us.
'What to do? Since the day this woman came to our house, our
family's fortunes bave been ruined,' the·old woman was saying.
The daughter-in-law had tears in her eyes. She hadn't touched her
food while the man was eating nonchalantly.
'Look at her now, sitting I here with a stiff face. Go, go to hell now.
Not only did you not bring anything, now you have dumped these two girls like
two curses on me,' the mother-in-law said. 41
According to Priyanka, a door-bitch is the hostess who stands outside the
disco. She screens every girl walking in, and if your waist is more than
twenty-four inches, or if you were not wearing something right out of an item
number, the door-bitch will raise an eyebrow at you like you are a
fifty-year-old aunty. 47
Guys can never figure out what to say in such emotional moments and
always end up saying something stupid.
'Your mother is crazy .. .'
'Don't say anything about my mother. I love her. Can you just listen to
me for five minutes?' Priyanka said.
I swore to myself to stay quiet for the next five minutes. I started
counting my breath to pass time. Sixteen a minute is my average; eighty
breaths would mean I had listened to her for five minutes. 51
P: 'My mum and I were best friends once - until class eight I think.
Then as I became older, she became crazier.'
I wondered if I should point out that she had just told me not to call
her mum crazy. However, I had promised myself I would keep quiet.
'She had different rules for me and my brother. She would comment on
everything I wore, everywhere I went, whereas my brother ... she would never
say anything to him... 51
'Bio?' Priyanka said to Esha. It was their code word for a visit to
the toilet together for a private conversation.
'Tell me your name. You're some kid in India, ain't ya, boy?'
'Yes, sir. I am in India.'
'So what did you have to do to get this job? Degree in nuclear physics?'
'Sir, do you need help with your cleaner or not?'
'C'mon, son, answer me. I don't need your help. Yeah, I'll change the
dust bag. What about you guys? When will you change your dusty country?' 58
'Don't even make me happy just by chance,' Priyanka's mother said. 65
We had a basic hug without really touching. A kiss was out of the
question. 70 [Priyanka near-breakup]
'Thanks for listening to me,' Esha said. Only women think there is
a reason to thank people when someone listens to them. 76
India has a billion people, but at night, 99 per cent of tbem are fasr
asleep. Then this land belongs to a chosen few: truck drivers, late-shift
workers, doctors, hotel staff and call-centre agents. We, the nocturnals
temporarily rule the roads and the country. 91
Turning to the boy, she said. ‘Three strips of Fluoxetine, and five strips
each of Sertraline and Paroxetine. 92
[these are versions of prozac and similar drugs; the boy at the counter
initially wants to see a prescription]
Four things needed for success:
- a medium amount of intelligence,
- a bit of imagination
- self-confidence
- facing, suffering failure
Postcolonial Text, Vol 8, No 1 (2013) Among the current glut of pulp fiction situated in the call-centre, Chetan Bhagat’s best-selling One Night @ the Call Centre (2004) is, in addition to being the first work of call-centre lit, still probably the most popular book in the genre, with over 2.5 million copies of the novel sold. Since publishing One Night, the former investment banker is now widely considered to be the most read living Indian author (McCrum). Bhagat can also be credited for the runaway success of the call-centre-lit genre. As one commenter on the Indian popular culture blog Jabberwock complained, “stories concerning youngsters used to be about school, gangs or some other social ill that the media had glommed onto . . . Now every god-dammity-damn indian [sic] story has to involve a call[-]center in some form or fashion” (Singh, “End”). Indeed, the publication of One Night by Indian publisher Rupa & Co. has spurred a number of imitators among the multinational English-language publishing houses—Hachette, Penguin, and HarperCollins—which have a base in India and are eager to cash in on the call-center-lit trend, thereby accessing a pool of readers estimated to become the largest in the world within the next decade (Burke).
One Night @ the Call Centre is at once a romantic comedy, a self-help book with spiritual undertones, and a motivational management guide that critiques positive neoliberal narratives around globalization and capitalism just as it champions them with nationalist rhetoric. The main story, which in the framing narrative is told by a mysterious woman to Bhagat, relates (unsurprisingly) to one night in the lives of six call-centre employees. During the night they field phone calls from Americans, who are always represented as either racist or deeply stupid, squabble with each other and, finally, receive a revelatory phone call from God. With the intervention of the God character, the unhappy call-centre workers are able to achieve personal and professional success and ultimately save their call-centre—with which they have a love-hate relationship—from being closed. The novel’s combination of social critique, suspense, romance and humour have made it a hit—within three days of the book’s release, its initial print run of 50,000 copies had sold out (Banerjee 288). One Night’s simple and readable form of English may have also worked to increase its sales to readers. Although in 2004 only approximately one-third of the Indian population could speak English, a proficiency in the language is increasingly being perceived as integral to achieving some measure of success in the country. This “linguistic apartheid” (89), as Tina Basi calls it, begins early: from a young age, children of the middle and upper classes almost invariably receive an education in English; in fact, higher education is almost impossible to receive without a preliminary knowledge of the language (Chopra, qtd. in Nadeem 249, note 43). Probal Dasgupta writes that India is caught in a diglossic situation in which English is seen as the most prestigious of the languages spoken in the country.
In his study of Indo-Anglian popular fiction, Tabish Khair defines the
content of pulp writing as
not necessarily bad literature, but [which] does not set out to be
consciously “literary”; [it] may not be completely derivative, but it
tends to follow generic “formulas”; [it] may not be read by millions,
but it sets out to attract as many members of a linguistic community
as possible; [it] does not have to have simple narratives, but it is
fiction whose primary concern is the activity of narration.
Khair, Tabish. “Indian Pulp in English: A Preliminary
Overview from Dutt to De.” The Journal of Commonwealth
Literature 48.3 (2008): 43-59
The novels that belong to the “call-center lit” genre typically fit both
sets of criteria: published exclusively in paperback form, they are often
relatively inexpensive; they bear cartoon covers in eye-catching primary
colours; their writing is typically straightforward, simple, and
“un-literary;” and, as we will see, they often share similar thematic
concerns.
...
`
The workers described in call-centre lit undergo a profound transition
within the call-centre, assuming a hybrid identity not quite “Indian” and
yet not “Western” — an identity we may only be able to describe, vaguely,
as “globalized”—which places them in a heterotopia of crisis.
[AM: I think the word "globalized" does not convey the right idea. The
attempt is to discover a distinct Indian identity, albeit one that speaks
in English. This identity is informed by global forces, but at least in
Bhagat, wishes to remain intensely Indian. ]
see also: http://www.indianruminations.com/featured-stories/the-emergence-of-a-new-indian-identity-in-chetan-bhagat-s-works-s-sivanandan-tamilnadu/