The Call Centre industry has been in India for more than a decade, but it has taken us this long to fathom a decent book out of our experience. Brinda S. Narayan has done just that with an inter-linked short story collection called Bangalore Calling. This is a book about how the new industry, born out of a need for the Western world to cut costs and offshore work to India, has externally affected the Indian landscape and internally affected the psyche of the Indian people.
Bangalore Calling deserves kudos at many levels. Brinda depicts all kinds of people who work in the industry. Whether it is Yvette, the trainer who is not fully convinced if she is doing the right thing by asking people to change their accent and identity just so she can keep her job, contrasted with designer stuff flaunting manicured Akriti who runs psychological tests to assert her presence and value to her company Callus. Panduranga, the driver, who believes in Ayyappa and spars over the CD in the cab and loses to Jimuntha/Jimmi/Jim, a garage rock-musician who makes out with different colleagues, juxtaposed with Rani who can’t clean the women toilets any better and Bitty who can’t stand the ways of her Ayurveda practising father. Varghese, administrative officer, dealing with everything at the call centre in his unique rhinoceros-style contrasted with Natalie, who knowing she might lose her job seeks refuge in God through donations.
In a set of 15 short stories Brinda has laid open almost all the themes that govern the people working in the industry: independence vs tradition, moral ambiguities, ambition and its paths, the rich vs poor, greed vs restraint, peer pressure vs introspection, and so on. In fact, these are the themes that generally dictate all human behaviour. By focusing on these Brinda has created a complete world unto itself and that is why this is a book that becomes representative of the new world of global economy and how it plays out in the minds of the new economic reality of India.
The placing of the stories is excellent. The way they flow into each other bound by the Hurricane Ike and Beam America and the Florida Trip brings alive the dynamic nature of a working call centre. We race through the book absorbing the details but also gearing up for the crux of the debate: real exchange of the industry — culture.
One of the major thrust of Bangalore Calling is language and accent neutralisation. The language in the book suits its environment but could have been further localised. Brinda does use local Kannada words but could have hit harder by using the modern day language of youth (mobile text-speak). This could have been done when the characters speak outside the call centre. For instance, the pronunciation of Yvette: Eewet and Whyvet.
Overall a book very worth reading by all, those who work in the industry and those who care about what is happening to the India whose face is changing with the new malls and the sudden disposable incomes. It gives us pointers to what is at stake: culture.
Amandeep Sandhu is the author of Sepia Leaves