One Night @ the Call Centre First published by Rupa & Co in 2005
The 3 mistakes of my life First published by Rupa & Co in 2008
2 States – The Story of My Marriage First published by Rupa & Co in 2009
Over the last couple of years, visiting our home town in Tamil Nadu – Kumbakonam in Thanjavur District – hadn’t been a very pleasant experience. When the kids were quite small, we skipped going home for three consecutive years as attending to their needs during a train journey from New Delhi to Chennai (roughly 2200 kms, 33 hours) and then from Chennai to Kumbakonam (275 kms, 7 hrs) was a quite a tedious affair. Feeding, changing clothes, making their visits to the train toilets safe and other attendant duties were Herculean tasks for us. They have grown up now and could take care of their needs themselves easily.
Still at the back of my mind, visiting home did not evoke the same kind of sentiment as it used to do in the past. Surely, it is a sign of getting old and the attendant illness of old age, cynicism. We have been used to a degree of comfort in Delhi which one cannot expect there at KMU, the least bearable being the 2-3 hours power cut. In the past, the Electricity Board in that state used to cut supply at any time during the day for two hours; nowadays, it is at specified hours, which is some improvement in the management of discomfort. One must be thankful for small mercies!
The other factor which has always worried me was the kind of climate which prevails at TN during June. It is hot, sultry and perspiring. No doubt, Delhi is hotter and more perspiring, but at least one has the comfort of one’s home. Again, one would not like to invite more discomfort on holidays, with two young ones in tow. All these considerations were dashed to the ground once my wife decided that we should go! All rational arguments against going home were shred to tatters by the force of pure emotion. Her argument is that a visit in a year to see parents, brothers and sisters – not in-laws of these species - is too great an accomplishment and could be traded against two hour power cuts and the sultry weather.
It was in this situation we set out on our rail yatra on the 2nd of June. I decided before hand not to tax my mind with heavy reading on journey. With all the controversies surrounding Chetan Bhagat after the release of 3 idiots, I thought it would be a good idea to read all 4 of his novels in one go, which had remained unread for the last 4-5 months. I started off with One Night @ the Call Centre rather than Chetan’s first novel 5 point someone. One could only explain this mishap in Chetan’s own words, “I was seriously messed up in the head and haven’t slept for fifty hours straight”. Only into the third chapter, Chetan proves right what he had said in his interviews, which is, give a good boot to Queen’s language and enter the brash, outlandish new world of Indian English. Through Shyam, the protagonist, he in fact, says clearly, “My English is not that great – actually nothing about me is great”. Another feature one can easily discern is how comfortably the story – which is true of other novels too – presents itself for Hindi film-making. In many ways, it even closely resembles Hindi films, which is one reason why two of Bhagat’s novels have been made into successful Hindi films.
One Night @ the Call Centre is a narration of all that happens at a call centre in a single night to two male and three female agents, Shyam, the narrator, his girlfriend Priyanka, Vroom, the brash lad who lives his life on the fast lane, Eisha, whose fascination for the fashion world ends in disaster and Radhika, the obedient daughter in law who is rewarded for her tireless service to her mother in law with migraine and betrayal by her husband. In some ways, Chetan is successful in capturing the fast paced life style of the young urban Indian in this novel. You have the lingo of the young India, liberal use of the f- and b- words, dating, even pre marital sex, complete irreverence towards the older generation, which borders on contempt and ridicule on many occasions and at last the problem common to all generations, namely, the disconnect between the what is desired in life and what life itself has got in store for them.
There are some features which repeat themselves throughout the novel, which could be categorised as under:
Anti-feminist
“Apart from cardamom, Priyanka’s favourite spice is gossip”
“Just that it is nice to have a girlfriend with half a brain”
“Women love to repair the injury – as long as it is not too gross”
“Girls’s handbags have enough to make a survival kit for Antartica”
“Girls and their coded communication”, “Women can ignore men for sexy shoes”
“Only women think there is a reason to thank people if they listen to them”
“I am constantly amazed at the ability of women to calm down. All they need to do is talk, hug and cry it out for ten minutes – and then they can face any of life’s crap”
Funny
“The ring-shapped earrings were so large, they could be bangles”
“I moved aside from the tornado to save another collision” (a kid with lollipop running towards Shyam while dating with Priyanka in rail museum, Chanakyapuri)
“Whoever starts crying first always has an advantage in an argument”
Stereotypes
“he did an MBA from some unpronounceable university in South India”
Slangs
it was a group thing,
less anti social,
you get that mental smirk,
I needed to de-stress,
Don’t take tension dude,
one of the thousands of Indian geeks coding away in Microsoft,
I don’t want some random people,
Don’t mess with me,
my life is screwed up,
Don’t be so high on America,
Smart observations
“The only thing better than watching beautiful people in a disc is watching a fight. A fight means the party is totally rocking”
“Sorting Americans’ oven and fridge problems was easier than solving life’s problems”
Pseudo-scientific
“Women playing with their hair while talking to a guy is an automatic female preening gesture”,
“Esha’s eyebrow rise in suspicion. The invisible female antennae were out and suggesting caution.”
Political Statement
“An entire generation up all night, providing crutches for the white morons to run their lives. And then big companies come and convince us with their advertising to value crap we don’t need, do jobs we hate so that we can buy stuff – junk food, colored fizzy water, dumbass credit cards and overpriced shoes. They call it youth culture. Is this what they think youth is about? Two generations ago, the youth got this country free. Now that was something meaningful. But what happened after that? We have just been reduced to a high-spending demographic. “
“We should be building roads, power plants, airports, phone networks and metro trains in every city like madness. And if the government moves it’s rear-end and does that the young people in this country will find jobs there. Hell, I would work days and nights for that – as long as I know that what I am doing is helping build something for my country, for its future. But the government doesn’t believe in doing any real work, so they allow these BPOs to be opened and think they have taken care of the youth. Just as this stupid MTV thinks showing a demented chick do a dance in her underwear will make the program a youth special.”
(This is another version of left-wing criticism of the leseez faire capitalism, which is always in search for new markets, often by dubious means and for dubious reasons).
At last, the story collapses into a filmi ending, with the agents frightening the Yankees with a virus hit to increase call rates and Priyanka choosing Shyam over a Microsoft NRI because of the much abused cliché, “love over money”. The most lovable and enjoyable aspect of this novel is how Bhagat could make even the dullest events funny. Chetan Bhagat may not be able to immerse deep into the cesspool that is life and pontificate on its immense problems to come out with workable solutions, but he has in his own way made a lot of us realise the complexities of modern life in this readable book.
Five Point Someone, on the other hand, had gained fame because of a successful film, which disclaimers from the Producer notwithstanding, is largely based on the novel. As Bhagat says at the beginning, the novel is an example of how screwed up your college years can get if you don’t think straight. Paradoxically, despite his first hand experience of life inside at IIT, the story sounds unreal even as a narrative with a slightly higher dose of classroom-bumping, drinking-binge and endless dating. Granting that getting into IIT requires a particular mindset, this book and indeed the film which was made out of it, gives an impression that getting into it is the harder part than getting out! One can understand a nuanced criticism of a herd mentality which is obsessed with obtaining good grades, but projecting life in IIT as one endless journey consisting of prank, eating “Parathas” at Sai’s dhaba and tasting “Vanilla” at the ice cream parlour is a little too unreal.
But the story is not entirely removed from reality. It does portray life and more importantly, learning inside an elite institution like an IIT. Excellence for the students was or perhaps still is, developing an obsession with higher and higher grades. Such an obsession could even get worse, as Bhagat says, “The Professors kept up the pressure and over worked students worked even harder to beat the average, thereby, pushing the average higher.” The witticism and brutally funny asides bordering sometimes on the heartless keep flowing from the pen of Bhagat in this story too. To give only a few examples, the following would suffice:
“he (Alok) was kind of poor, I mean not World Bank ads type starving poor or anything.”
“Famished UNICEF kid”
“How happy his mother and half a father were.”
“Given how much Fatso eats, he could probably build his bones back in a day.”
“No one talks for the next sixty minutes” he pronounced in a no-nonsense tone that would make Saddam Hussein shudder, it that clear?” Chalk dust formed a cloud as if Cherian had burst a grenade in the classroom”.
The other feature, anti-feminism, also keeps raising its head often. Again only two examples,
“Figuring out women is harder than topping a ManPro Quiz.”
“How girls cry for two different reasons at the same time”.
As far a political statement, there is only a faint hint of the author’s mind through the mouth of Ryan when he says, “And this IIT system is nothing but a mice race. It is not a rate race, mind you, as rats sound somewhat shrewd and clever. So it is not about that. It is about mindlessly running a race for four years, in every class, every assignment and every test. It is a race where profs judge you every ten steps, with a GPA stamped on you every semester. Profs who have no idea what science and learning are about. Yes, that is what I think of the profs I mean, what have IITs given to this country? Name one invention in the last three decades.”
3 mistakes of my life is, perhaps, the least acclaimed of his novels. It enters into the dangerous territory of political mobilisation, political organisations, their structure and functioning and that all enduring political theme, Hindu-Muslim relationship. Enacted against the backdrop of the Gujrat riots of 2002, one tends to expect a contestation of rival view-points in this novel, Hindu-Muslim, religious-secular, fanatic-tolerant, committed-liberal etc, but these expectations are belied as Chetan meanders through cricket, tuitions and marketing to tell a lifeless story. The portrayal of a Muslim character through a talented cricketer is new, but investing him with superhuman abilities at hitting sixes of every ball bowled at him is unbelievable. Still, Chetan is successful in describing the business acumen of the Gujaratis, through Govind’s attempt to establish himself in life. There is that start with a modest beginning and slowly accumulating capital and investing it in higher ventures. Bhagat’s background of Management Education coupled with his eye for details in observing the conduct of people in their daily lives brings to the fore some amazing nuggets of information such as how Govind’s mother optimises her talents and utilizes Govind to do the delivery. Unlike his pseudo-scientific quotes in his earlier novels, this sprinkling of management principles is tasteful and consumable, like the following, “My mother could delegate routinue tasks like delivery and focus on her core competence – cooking.”
Govind’s fixation with money making is also explained through management jargon. When her mother picks a ‘dhokla’ piece from an order prepared and gives it to him, Govind thinks it is bad business, sucking out something from a customer order. When the shop Govind runs turns from selling cricket goods alone to stationery, cricket coaching and Maths tuition, Chetan makes a telling remark, “I may not have diversified geographically, but I had diversified my product offering.” This is not a just a smart observation, but a practice adopted by every “dhukaanwallah” all over the country. The trade mark wise-cracks “Indian mothers have two tasks – to tell children to eat more or study more”, the wonderful rumination, “why do old people like news papers so much? They love reading the news, but what do they do about it?” a teasingly cheeky take, “Every girl has a wonderful small right after bath, I think they should bottle it and sell it.” and the philosophical one, “Life is an optimisation problem, with tonnes of variables and constraints.” are evidence of Bhagat’s keen eye for observing individual foibles.
In a novel purportedly political, there is very little of political ramblings from the mouths of the protagonists. Even this little one from Ali’s father sounds like a management principle:
“Yes take any husband and wife. They will fight, and hurt each other emotionally. However, later they will make up, with hugs, presents or kind understanding words. These reconciliatory mechanisms are essential. The problem in Indian Hindu-Muslim rivalry is not that that one is right and the other is wrong. It is that there are no reconciliatory mechanisms.’
Even granting that the end was predictably filimi, the lengths to which Govind & Ish go to save Ali’s life is not, because one sees examples of it all over the country, especially in small town India. At the end, the solution which Bhagat offers to the Hindu-Muslim problem is individual conduct to take care of the other rather than devising a social mechanism, going against the reconciliation mechanisms which Ali’s father hints at.
2 States – The Story of my Marriage is the wittiest and the most enjoyable of the four novels. As a Tamilian myself, I did not find the fun which Chetan makes of Tamilian way of life, their habits, food, their frugality and their language offensive at all! As he says in his acknowledgement itself, “You only make digs at people you care for.” The fun he makes of Tamilians is all the more enjoyable because of Chetan’s no-holds-barred approach. It is practically impossible to dish out examples of the wisecracks, asides and the heartless jokes as they are too innumerable to collate. The best one is of course, “You Tamilians have too much brain but too little heart.” Since this is 110 per cent fun, it is the serious stuff which needs to be fished out. One of this kind is when Guruji advises Krish to forgive his father for forgiving doesn’t make the person you hurt feel better, it makes you feel better! In fact the greater message comes at the end when Ananya’s father says, while delivering a speech at the Reception, “When your child decides to love a new person, you can either see it as a chance to hate some people – the person they choose and their families. However, you can also see it as a chance to love some more people. And since when did loving more people become a bad thing?” Ten points out of ten!
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