One night ...

“One night at the call center” by Chetan Bhagat is an account of one eventful night in the lives of a bunch of people working at a call center.

The book reminded me of the time when I was working with Delphi at ITPL, Bangalore. Within this campus are a number of call centers of top companies. In the evenings, several people rush to catch the 6pm shuttles to get back home after a busy day at work. As the buses leave one after the other, numerous of cabs enter the ITPL campus. The early mornings when we arrived for work, we would see people getting into their cabs wishing each other good-byes. These people were definitely head-turners… strikingly dressed, heavily scented, some with tattoos, straight soft/straightened hair, some with rings pricked all over their bodies, and most of them with an ultra-modish attitude. We had heard lots of rumors about how couples had been caught in the middle of some better-not-speak-abt-it activities. Bangalore has also witnessed a number of sensational crimes related to call center employees in the recent past!

Back to the book, the main characters in the book are working at the call center mostly for money…apart from the money, I wonder what gives a call-centre employee “job satisfaction”! The story is predictable and not that interesting…the writing is natural (meaning spoken English). I’ve heard from a lot of people that the writer’s earlier book “Five point someone” is much better…so looking forward to reading that one sometime.