One Night at the Call Centre

One Night At the Call Centre is a comedic look at modern India's interactions with the West, taking place in a call centre where we learn about the lives behind the voices on the end of the line when we try to change our mobile phone billing plan. Six friends are selling home appliances to the US from a call centre in India. Each one has an issue with love. Call agent Sam works next to the girl who's just dumped him. He's dating someone he can't stand, just to get over her. Esha is two inches short of becoming a model. Vroom wants to change the world. Radikha's trying to manage her mother-in-law, and hold down her job.

The book takes place on Thanksgiving in America, and customers are queuing up to complain about white goods going wrong. On this night of a thousand phone calls, when life couldn't look more dismal, God phones up and offers this team, stuck in dead-end jobs dealing with other people's problems, a way out.

This is perhaps one of the most contemporary books about India, taking in the new class of workers, technical whizzes and call centre operatives with disposable income and spinning a funny romantic fable out of their predicament. While other modern books about India deal with the gritty harshness of slum life and triumphs over adversity, Bhagat's book is all fluffy and funny one-liners, very readable and good fun.