Thinking Activity: One Night At The Call Center by Chetan Bhagat
Hello Readers
This post is a bit subjective; considering the fact that it demands the discussion on my understanding and impressions of the text at hand. So, let me begin with my first encounter with a Chetan Bhagat novel and how the initial opinions changed by the time I became a student of literature and what opinions I have now.
Chetan Bhagat being a popular writer while I was a teenager, I bought and read his, Three Mistakes Of My Life. At that the time, the novel's plot was very relatable; the language was also easy to grasp and the book wasn't much bulky. These advantages attracted me to Bhagat's Half Girlfriend and One Night At The Call Center; both of which I couldn't finish since the attraction faded too soon. Once in college, the opinions on Bhagat and his works changed drastically pertaining to the popular opinion that he was a popular writer and not a classic; and therefore, held a lower value in literary terms because his works didn't offer much to the mind which always expected literary works to provide a sort of 'universal' teaching or at least question the societal norms. Anyways, this opinion was also, like the earlier one, bound to change; and it did. Now that I've completed my Undergraduate course in Literature, I've somehow become more open to novelty and I think before forming an opinion on a text, an objective reading and study of the same is prerequisite. Now I have come to realize that Bhagat's novels have much to offer as a 'mirror of the society' metaphor attributed to literature.
Coming to Bhagat's One Night At The Call Center I'm not going to involve in a detailed description about the plot of the novel, but to put it in the words of the 'storyteller' from the novel;
"It is a story about six people, in a call center, at one night."
The plot of the novel captures some of the major issues of the time during its publication. One of them being the Globalization phenomenon at the beginning of the 21st century. The very idea of setting his story in a call center, hints at a reality during the times of globalization. Globalization brought with it the idea of outsourcing (the process of taking work that used to be done in-house,e.g. accounting, and paying another company to do it.). The outsourcing offered jobs to a large number of young adults in India. And call centers are a great examples of that. This outsourcing is what Thomas Friedman called a World flattener in his The World Is Flat, wherein he discusses how 'globalization has created a more level playing field for economic competition'.
This post is a bit subjective; considering the fact that it demands the discussion on my understanding and impressions of the text at hand. So, let me begin with my first encounter with a Chetan Bhagat novel and how the initial opinions changed by the time I became a student of literature and what opinions I have now.
Chetan Bhagat being a popular writer while I was a teenager, I bought and read his, Three Mistakes Of My Life. At that the time, the novel's plot was very relatable; the language was also easy to grasp and the book wasn't much bulky. These advantages attracted me to Bhagat's Half Girlfriend and One Night At The Call Center; both of which I couldn't finish since the attraction faded too soon. Once in college, the opinions on Bhagat and his works changed drastically pertaining to the popular opinion that he was a popular writer and not a classic; and therefore, held a lower value in literary terms because his works didn't offer much to the mind which always expected literary works to provide a sort of 'universal' teaching or at least question the societal norms. Anyways, this opinion was also, like the earlier one, bound to change; and it did. Now that I've completed my Undergraduate course in Literature, I've somehow become more open to novelty and I think before forming an opinion on a text, an objective reading and study of the same is prerequisite. Now I have come to realize that Bhagat's novels have much to offer as a 'mirror of the society' metaphor attributed to literature.
"It is a story about six people, in a call center, at one night."
The plot of the novel captures some of the major issues of the time during its publication. One of them being the Globalization phenomenon at the beginning of the 21st century. The very idea of setting his story in a call center, hints at a reality during the times of globalization. Globalization brought with it the idea of outsourcing (the process of taking work that used to be done in-house,e.g. accounting, and paying another company to do it.). The outsourcing offered jobs to a large number of young adults in India. And call centers are a great examples of that. This outsourcing is what Thomas Friedman called a World flattener in his The World Is Flat, wherein he discusses how 'globalization has created a more level playing field for economic competition'.
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