Book Review: One Night at the Call Center
Chetan Bhagat's Novel about Six Call-Center Employees in India
Irate customers, racist comments, the pressure of reaching sales targets, incompetent bosses and impending lay-offs are part of the daily call center routine. On top of these work pressures, every employee has their own personal problems to deal with. One Night @ the Call Center (or ON@TCC as it is called; Rupa, 2005) portrays the struggles of six call center employees in Delhi and the one special night that changed their lives.
The Protagonists
- Shyam is the narrator and the group’s team leader. He is still not over the break-up from his ex-girl-friend Priyanka and is also suffering under an incapable boss but does not know how to assert himself.
- Varun, his friend, is nick named Vroom because of his love for fast bikes. During the course of the story, he turns from ardent consumer of any icons of youth culture like fast food, movies, girls and going out into a prophet for the youth movement.
- Priyanka, Shyam’s ex, is forever torn between what she wants and making her mother happy. She has agreed to an arranged marriage with an NRI and a new, materialistic life in Seattle when she discovers a few unsettling things about her husband-to-be.
- Esha is her call-center friend, an aspiring model who has come to Delhi from a small town and realizes the temptations and traps that come with her dream career.
- Radhika is struggling to please her demanding and traditional in-laws and her absent husband. Restraining her anger with anti-depressants just sets her up for a rude shock that will help her gain control of her life again.
- Finally, there is Military Uncle, the oldest and quietest of the team members whose real name is not even revealed. He has fallen out with his son and his family but realizes that he needs to swallow his ego if he wants to reconcile.
The Call Center Setting
The six “agents” deal with the daily pressures of call center life and share their personal problems. What becomes clear is that the call center job is just a stepping stone in their lives until they have found what they want to do.
It is a monetary means to an end that helps them achieve their (short-term) goals. As Vroom says: “An air-conditioned sweatshop is still a sweatshop….[I don’t quit] Because I need the money. My friends have a lifestyle that I have to keep up with” (p. 208).
Themes
Frustration, rejection, peer and parental pressure and conformity are some of the issues that the book’s characters deal with. During a life-and-death situation, the call center agents finally get a call that will change their lives. God reminds them to listen to their “inner call” and makes them reflect on what they really want to do with their lives.
Call, inner call, calling - Chetan Bhagat's books are not difficult to grasp. But this lack of literary finesse is exactly Bhagat’s appeal: He portrays real-life people who say it like it is throughout a straightforward plot and setting. In the March 24, 2008 DNA interview "How the Voice of a Generation Fought His Critics...and Won" by Labonita Ghosh, the investment banker-turned-author admits: "I'm not a good writer, but I'm a very good storyteller."
The Author
In India, Chetan Bhagat is something like a phenomenon because his first two books became fast successes and touched a nerve with millions of readers. Five Point Someone (Rupa, 2004) and ON@TCC (2005) have sold combined more than one million copies. His third novel, The Three Mistakes of My Life (Rupa, published in May), is on its way to becoming a bestseller.
It looks like Bhagat's readers disagree with the critics and take a certain comfort in his reminder that life itself is mundane.
Chetan Bhagat One Night at the Call Center
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