Book Review : Chetan Bhagat’s One Night At The Call Centre

Original post in my blogspot on January 8, 2011

My Rating

After almost 6 months of not reading any book , I read this book a few days back . I had earlier read Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone which was indeed good .

              I must say comparing this to Five point someone is not cool , as this book does not deal with the students , although it represents the youth of the country . This book is about 6 call centre employees – Shyam , Priyanka , Esha , Vroom , Radhika & “military uncle” . Just like Five point someone was adapted in a movie , the bollywood movie -“Hello” (2008) starring Salman Khan was adapted from this story . Turns out that this book has twist through the literal  “deus ex machina ” – a plot device where a complicated problem is abruptly solved by an unexpected intervention of a new character. The new character in this story is none other than God.

            The preface includes a train journey by Chetan Bhagat from IIT Kanpur to Delhi where he meets a beautiful girl who narrates him this story provided he makes the story , his second book . The book then starts with the Shyam , as first person – who tells the readers about his misfortunes as a call centre employees . Turns out that each one of his colleagues had their own woes to share . As it said – every head has its own head ache , Shyam also shares the woes of the other 5 . The 6 of them had their own American names , as the callers from the US could pronounce their Indian names . They had to deal with all kind of meaningless calls , regarding every silly problem that could occur after purchasing a product and they had answer all of their callers patiently .

            Three-Fourth of the book goes at a good pace describing the lives of the 6 people . Apart from the problems with the callers , they also had a terrible boss – Bakshi . Shyam and Vroom had designed a new website for the firm and they submitted the report to Bakshi . Shyam was expecting to be promoted as the team leader while Bakshi submitted the report to Boston with his name in it . Thus , Bakshi not only affected the Shyam’s work life but that had impact on his personal life as well . The 6 of them had a terrible personal life as well .

              The twist comes when the lives of the 6 people dramatically gets affected on the same day and they leave in a Qualis at 2 am . They end up in getting the Qualis skid of the road into a construction site where they battle for life. It turns out that Shyam gets a phone call then , a phone call from God . The call is also heard by the others and God tells them the reason for their misery and how they can overcome it .

              The story then speeds up with Shyam & Vroom threatening Bakshi ,  saving the jobs of the colleagues and then improving their own lives as well . They have plans of starting their own web designing firm , and Shyam get backs his love- Priyanka . The story makes an abrupt change after the phone call of God . I was expecting a good twist in this story but turns out that this wasnt upto the expectations . But the book is definitely worth a read . Turns out that the girl who narrates the story turns out to be Goddess Shakti , herself or was it Chetan Bhagat’s dream ?

              Well , inclusion of the new character – God was a good idea but turns out that it didnt fit the storyline very well . The post-phone-call story isnt that good . One thing why I like Chetan Bhagat’s books is that he describes the characters in the story really well . He does the same here – may it be the mysterious story teller girl or Shyam . The pace of the book is really good till the phone call from God & I was drowned into the story . I feel that the post phone call story could have been better. Thats it for now , I had a nice time reading the book while travelling in the bus . Hope you readers have a nice time too  🙂  .