Hope and Despair in the One Night @ the Call Center by Chetan Bhagat

INTRODUCTION

He is a modern social fictional writer. Here, Chetan Bhagat shows the harsh reality about call centers, a dark part of this call centers which can‘t be seen or shown by anyone or any prior writers. Chetan shows the life their characters in this way that any common men/women can relate their life to any character in the novel. The whole novel is divided into two parts. All characters live a life of mechanized lives. The novelist describes the issues of family, problems of work place and so and so on in a genuine and interesting way. The second part of the novel shows the reformation of all characters. Whole novel deals with the despair and in the last a ray of hope change the life of all employees of the call center. The novel based on the life of the people of middle class family in India and their problems. It is a story of emotions which shows hope, love, despair and ambitions. This novel shows the many aspects of human life. Here the novelist shows that how one character‘s expectations from other people and the despair after not fulfilling them. The story of One Night at Call Center moves around six people. Three are males and three and females. All of them are working in a same call center .They all are different from each other but they have a similarity in them that all of them are fed up with their lives. This story is about a night at call center which changes the lives of all the people as well as it changes their way of thinking .Here Chetan Bhagat shows the ray of the hope for the people of the call center that this call of God will change their life. Shyam Mehra, who is the protagonist as well as the narrator of the story in this novel. He is very much confused in his life. He is a common boy. He loves Priyanka who loves to Ganesh an NRI boy. He became sad to know about Priyanka‘s affair with NRI boy and second thing of his sadness was that he thought that his boss has cheated him and Varun (Vroom) is a friend of Shyam and does not want to do the job but Shyam wanted to keep up his standard up so he has to work there. On the other hand Priyanka‘s mother wants that Priyanka should marry with Ganesh next month but she does not want. She still has some feelings for Shyam. Later on Shyam tell her about the baldness of Ganesh who hide this from her. Esha Singh or Eliza is an ambitious girl who wants to become a model. When she finds that there is no way to become a model, She runs away from home and join call center to fulfill her dreams to be a model. She does many compromises with the hope of to be a Model. Esha has compromised by sleeping with a designer to get a modeling contract. But the boy turned out to be opportunistic as he betrays her by telling her that she can't become a model due to her height. He also tries to console her by sending her some money. Esha frustrated due to this betrayal and tries to suppress the mental pain by giving herself with Physical pain by cutting her skin. Here Chetan Bhagat showed the life of the ambitious middle class youth who are running after blind race of materialism without knowing the reality. Radhika another woman character her call husband a lot but shattered this love when she comes to know that on a radio program her husband selects another girl to ignore her. She became upset. One more character, a Military uncle, who is the oldest person in call center after all he is living a lonely life. Military Uncle tries again and again to be good to his son and grandson. But when he sends some photographs through mail to his grandson, his son loses his temper and warns him to away from his life. This was enough for the heartbroken of Military Uncle. One has the strategic vision and managerial leadership and the like to do well in life. They were shallow with no emotions or in depth feeling for anything in life-leave alone relationships. The boss was so manipulative on taking the credit for software prepared by his employees. In this materialistic and artificial world, everybody is involved in an extra marital relationship. Here in this novel Chetan Bhagat showed how all employees in the call centre is fed up with their life. But here is a miracle one day at night and everyone receives a call from God. God motivates all employees of the call center and tells the way to handle their problems. God tells them not to get frustrated by life struggles or problems. He suggests them to face the problems and to do 100% of efforts. After receiving the call the life of everyone is changed. After the call, everyone starts facing the problems with full of courage and try to find out the best solution of the problem. At last Shaym gets his love. Even Priyanka refuses to get marry to Ganesha who hide his baldness. Esha find a new job and starts to work for NGOs. Military Uncle who was so much frustrated also gets his family back at the end. In this novel, Bhagat criticizes our government and call centers in Vroom‟s voice: “Our government doesn‟t realize this, but Americans are using us. We are sacrificing an entire generation to service their call centers.” Bhagat determinedly draws parallels between United States attitude and the attitude of India‘s governmental and managerial elites. The call center is achieved by convincing United States customers of Western Computers, the firm that outsourcers its support to the Indian call center, that terrorist have attacked the United States with a computer virus that will do untold confusion upon the United States economy. In this novel Chetan Bhagat criticized to the politicians also. The corrupt state of politicians in our country is mentioned in the novel, “Why don‟t politicians commit suicides?” A call center employee points out that housewives, businessmen, employees and film stars commit suicide but politicians never do so because they are never hurt, they don‘t feel anything and unfortunately this nation is run by people who do not feel anything. All call center employees slog night after night so that they can have some money with which they can realize their simple dreams. based on the reality of the life of common people. The characters portrayed here are taken from the real life. All these characters presented the problems of the middle class Indians. In this novel each character shows the particular problem of the society. In this way the novel denotes the six different problems by six different people. Priyanka represent the girl in India who has to follow the decision of parents at the matter of marriage. God gives the solution to it and tells her to believe in herself. Through the Military uncle Chetan Bhagat tried to show the problems of old people in the society those are betrayed by the family and it is a common and a serious problem in society. At the end he also gets his family back. The story of the novel is very simple but the call from God makes it interesting. The conversation with God motivates the group to such an extent that they get ready to face their problems with utmost determination and motivation.

1. Bhagat, Chetan (2015). One Night @ the call center Rupa Publication.

Research Scholar, Department of English, Shri J. J. T. University, Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan dochaniaravinder009@gmail.com