Call centre books and books about management schools — two genres I can live quite happily without. The writing seems to be exactly the same, the plotlines too follow a similar narrative. Usually Bumbling Boy (who is the first person narrator) encounters some mishaps, has a strong group of friends who have to keep fishing him out of trouble, falls in love with a girl, who is leagues above him and in the end learns how to be confident and assertive.
But there is one book I’ve read recently that I had a chance to be surprised by. Another book about a guy in a call centre, if you can believe it, but this time, the prose was so lucid and well done, that it made me turn to the back and check the blurb to see if this was indeed the same book about a call centre. Call Me Dan by Anish Trivedi is set in Mumbai (yay) and the main character spends a lot of his time at The Ghetto, a bar I love. In fact, I suspect, if this book was to rise to the level of Shantaram, The Ghetto would probably be at the same status as Leopold’s, it is as much a character as anyone else in the book. The main character, Gautam, goes by Daniel at work and as Daniel, he has the guts to do a lot more things that Gautam perhaps wouldn’t. He lives in a tiny flat by Grant Road station, with his parents (constantly disappointed in him) and his sister (who lives a mysterious second life) and is always being nagged by his girlfriend (Michelle, Goan Catholic) about when they’re going to get married. But Dan/Gautam has a crush on Jennifer Aniston and wants to be with his perfect blonde woman, who will potentially walk around his house in his shirt and make breakfast.
Anyway, what I liked about this book particularly is the bits when the characters are talking but right after their dialogue ends, you see what they’re really thinking. I’m a fan of all the “What He Says: What He Really Means” articles, and Trivedi has done this really well in his book too. And not just with Dan, you see the other side of Michelle’s thoughts too, and by the end of it, your sympathies are totally with both of them, stuck in a far too long lasted relationship and unable to move forward or out of it.
The columnist is an author