One Night at the Call Centre: A comedy of romance and crossed lines [Paperback]

I have also had this book as Audio and the latter is very good, so perhaps the people who struggled to read this book might do better with Audio.
Am not sure why it's been given poor reviews, from the moment it says "one night a call came through and it was God" has you hooked. It gives insight into an otherwise unkown area, has the same feel good feel as Slum dog although without the poverty and violence. Dont beleive the poor reviews, it has irony, humour and compassion, not least is the realisation the youth in Mumbai have the same concerns, interests and parental problems that western youth suffer.

It's a book about an Indian call centre. What were you expecting? I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I think the characters that mattered were very well developed. Vroom is a bit one-dimensional, but the rest are heart-warming, sincere and credible. I have no idea whether the American clients are really like that, but anyone who has ever worked in the commercial front-line will know that there are characters like that. Anyhow it's a novel, not a documentary. The whole premise is spiritual. They get a phone call from God, how realistic do you want it to be?

If you are open to feeling uplifted and rejuvenated, this bookwill do the trick.

Six people are working the night-shift at the 'Connexions' call centre in Gurgaon, a high tech suburb of Delhi. With their western pseudonyms and their fake American accents, these are not just 'ordinary' call centre workers - these are the elite operatives of the Western Appliances Strategic Group (WASG), trained to handle the really bizarre and problematic (i.e. stupid) enquiries from the customers of an American computer and white-goods company. When the idiocy or perversity of the callers looks set to blow the strict time limits of the normal call handlers, their calls are fed through to the WASG who have slightly longer to deal with them. They've all been taught that "Americans are Stupid" and have been introduced to the "35=10 Rule" - in other words that the brain of a 35 year old American is similar to that of a 10 year old Indian.

The six are a very mixed bunch; there's Shyam (or Sam) who's the unofficial team leader and still trying to get over breaking up with his colleague Priyanka, who's still treating him very poorly. Then there's Esha (aka Eliza) who wants to be a model but just isn't tall enough and Vroom (or Victor) who has a motorbike and the hots for Esha. Radhika is married and struggling to keep her mother-in-law happy whilst wondering why hubby needs to spend quite so much time out of town. The last of the bunch is referred to as Military Uncle, a retired military man who works the online helpdesk. Each and all have their problems which are explored to varying degrees over the one night when the book is set.

It's the middle of the night in Delhi but in the USA it's the afternoon of Thanksgiving and customers are doing all manner of weird things to their ovens with over-sized turkeys and calling the team to ask for help or just to find a conveniently captive audience to swear at. It's clearly a rubbish job BUT things can still get worse. The call centre is under threat of closure and when the team learn the call centre is likely to close, we switch to scenes reminiscent of 'Buck Rogers in the 25th Century' - just like Buck they only have 'a few hours to save the universe' (or if not the universe, then at least their call centre). When the phone system goes down for the night, the team are determined to escape the centre and have a night to remember. However none of them could have imagined quite the way in which their lives were about to change.

With my most positive perspective and my rose-tinted glasses perched on my nose, I can find a few little things to praise the book for. It raises some important issues about the rise of the Indian call centres and their role in contemporary society, both for India and the countries that they serve. It asks why the cream of a generation of young Indians are staying up all night to help dumbos half a world away understand their microwave oven instruction books when they really ought to be building a better India. The neo-colonialism of the servant-master phone relationship is interrogated and might have actually got somewhere if the author hadn't taken a detour down Totally-Ridiculous-Alley. The characters are each individually believable, raise key issues of contemporary society and relationships and evoke a good dollop of empathy. So why does the book just fail to hit the mark?

On one hand the writer's reserve does undeniably get in the way. Shyam intercuts the events of the night at the call centre with recollections of dates he had with Priyanka before they split up. There are lots of awful dinners in pizza restaurants and a particularly sterile and cringe-worthy coupling in the back of a car that left me utterly unmoved. If you're going to write about pre-marital sex in a nation where any public displays of affection are forbidden, then do it properly or don't do it at all. Priyanka as a heroine of the piece just needs a damned good slap for all her silly ways and evil Bakshi the Boss is such a cartoon mess of a character that he should have been consigned to 1970s sitcom hell. But the single most annoying thing about the book is the ridiculously contrived phone call that's designed to change all their lives. I won't tell you WHO rings when they gang find themselves in a stupidly unbelievable situation of grave peril because quite frankly you wouldn't believe me. However it's fair to say there's not been such a silly rescue plot since Brian (in Monty Python's "The Life of Brian") was rescued from the top of a tower by little aliens in a space craft because the writers realised they'd forgotten to put something into the plot to get him back to the ground again.