Various interpretation in One Night @ The Call Center

Name: Trivedi Hezal K.

Roll No: 32

PG Reg. No. PG15101040

M.A. – English Regular, Semester-4

Year: 2017

Paper  No. 13:  The New Literature

Unit-1: Chetan Bhagat: One night @ the Call Centre (2005)

Assignments Topic- Various interpretation in One Night @ The Call Center

Submitted to: S.B. Gardi Department of English

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

(Gujarat – India)

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Introduction Of The Writer:

Chetan Bhagat (born 22 April 1974) is an Indian author, columnist, screenwriter, television personality and motivational speaker, known for his English-language dramedy  novels about young urban middle-class Indians. he is contemporary writer who has earned a different name and made their distinction in the literary world.  Bhagat writes columns for popular English and Hindi Newspapers, including The Times of India and Dainik Bhaskar  which is  focusing on youth, career and issues based on national development. Bhagat has a talent for tapping into the zeitgeist, that he is not much older than the people he writes about makes him a particularly credible portray of their world. We can say that because he includes some basic problems of Indian people.

His Top-selling Novels:

        Five Point Someone (2004)

        One Night @ the Call Center (2005)

        The Three Mistakes of My Life (2008)

        2 States (2009)

        Revolution 2020 (2011)

        What Young India Wants (2012)

        Half Girlfriend (2014)

    About The Novel:

 

  

    The Novel One night @ the call center (ON@TCC) is included in the 'New Literature'.       New literature means something which is published in 21st century with contemporary issues.

 

One Night At The Call Center’ by famed Indian young adult fiction writer Chetan Bhagat follows six friends who work at a Delhi call center which receives calls from America concerning the managing company’s electronics.   In this way the story of One Night at the Call Center is based on facts and fiction. The characters are taken from the real life. They represent the problem of middle class Indians. The story denotes the six different problems of six different people.  The story spans one night as the friends work the 10pm to 7am shift and is told through the eyes of Shyam Mehra, hung up over his ex-girlfriend and black sheep of his family. First person narrator is Shyam and through his perspective story goes on and author’s perspective is also same. Major characters are Shyam, Vroom, Military Uncle, Esha, Radhika and Priyanka. They all are working in call center. The story takes a dramatic and decisive turn when they get a phone call from God. 

Various Interpretation In  ON@TCC:

-         The effect of Globalization

-         Narrative structure

-         Mannepean Satire

-         Nationalism

-         Cyber PunK

-         Self help book

1) The effect of Globalization:

     Globalization (or globalisation) is the process of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas and other aspects of culture

For this novel we can say that the title of the Novel it self tells about the effect of globalization in call center. In this novel writer wants to give message to the Indians that who working in call center they just get good salary but it not give it a opportunity to do something else or for their skills and creativity Americanized form of English in the Call Centers. How globalization forced the characters of this Novel to change their names to Western:

e.g. like,

                       Shyam Mehra – Sam Mercy

                  Varun Malhotra  - Victor

                  Radhika Jha – Regima Jones

                  Esha singh – Elina  

In this book he gives three eras of Globalization :-

1)    Globalization 1.0

2)    Globalization 2.0 

3)   Globalization 3.0

In this novel we find rising anxieties, fear and stress in these six characters in call center are constantly under pressure. They themselves are to be blamed for it but one can not deny that globalization is also responsible for it. Actually this book talks about the anxieties, fears, and stress of call center employees. In one Night @ the Call Center we see some positive and negative effect of the Globalization. So here we can see the novel deals with the theme of globalization with the example of “The World is flat” by Thomas Friedman and connect the novel with his idea.

2)  Narrative Structure:

Bhagat uses the prologue and epilogue of the book to tell the story of how the story for the novel came to him; it was told to him by a girl on a night train to Delhi. The prologue is probably my favorite part of the whole book and the epilogue was shocking. That ‘what-the hell-just-happened-get-serious-what-even-is-my-life?’ kind of shocking.

This novel is very complex. We can also interpret as story going on as a dream sequence to the narrator. In the end there is a call from God and the readers might not agree with it so Chetan Bhagat has put another idea that whatever things are told by the God is told by Military Uncle. We can compare this novel with the movie Life Of Pie where the central idea is of God. Pie narrates his story that how he lived with a tiger for so many days and he believes in God because from childhood, he has been in the company of religious people and his mother used to tell him the stories of God.

3)  Mannepean Satire:

The genre of Menippean satire is a form of satire, usually in prose, which has a length and structure similar to a novel and is characterized by attacking mental attitudes rather than specific individuals or entities.

v  Characteristics of the Menippean Satire:

-         It is usually more comic than Socratic dialogue.

-   It is unusually free (from history, realism, and legend) and     hence fantastic.

-   Its fantasies create extraordinary situations for the purpose    of testing philosophical truth, especially through the manipulation of perspective…

-   It mixes the fantastic, symbolic, and even quasi-religious with”crude slum naturalism."

-   It is full of contradictory behavior and characters. (Bakhtin)

So, in ON@TCC we find the characteristic of Menippean Satire. this  novel present the current situation of the society.  Chetan Bhagat shows the real situation of the people. And Chetan Bhagat also critics the society.

In this novel Bhagat represent the idea of bossism that the boss of call centre who has a power over these six characters. And God making a call, Marriage of two different characters Radhika and Priyanka. Priyanka has problem with her mother that she tries to be free from the restrictions that was leads towards The Menippean satire where profession is important than the family so we can say that , time of modernization and globalization, because of that, some traditional ideas are satirized.

4)  Nationalism:

One Night @ the Call Center writer introduces a young India and their problems. This novel is show the Nationalism.

“Nationalism involves national identity, by contrast with the related

construct of patriotism, which involves the social conditioning and

personal behaviors that support a state’s decisions and actions”

Theme of nationality is a major part of this novel. In ‘One night at the call center’ the idea of nationality is here from the conversation between Vroom and Mr. Fox from America, E.G,

              Fox: Hello, Fox here, who is calling ?

Vroom: My name is victor; I am the call center agent from............

Fox: Ohh, damn you are the mother fucking idiot from India.

Here we can see how Fox said about the people of Indian. From this answer Vroom became very angry and replied very strongly.

 5) Cyber Punk:

Cyberpunk is a postmodern science fiction genre. Cyber Punk connected with science and technology. Cyberpunk plots often center on a conflict among hackers, artificial intelligences, and Mega Corporation, The characters deals with cyber technology. Vroom hacks Bakshi's email and writes email to Esah on his behalf. The American's are terrorized with the help of bug in MS Office as virus attack on Internet . In the world of technology heroes are hiker like Shyam. Machine is controlling human beings. Bakshi controlling heroes and other high teach and law life. Character dealing with Bug, FM radio, Email, Internet (computer). So by this all things we can say that this Novel is classify as Cyber punk novel.

 6) Duex ex Machina in One Night @ the Call Center:

Duex ex Machina it means “God from the machine”.  Call from the God represents Duex ex Machina. Author puts this kind of matter because it is necessary for the story. But question arises when some people don’t believe in God that’s why writer puts another option for it. May be it happens that the voice from call is not God but it is the voice of Military Uncle. So, God used as some kind of medium and through it proper message conveyed and these all characters begins their new life with new thoughts. To convince reader some kind of object plays a vital role. Here also God used as a machine or tool to conveyed some kind of positive message. At the end all characters lived happy life with their attitude.

7) Self Help Book:

Self help book is about moral lesson, solution of problems and also helpful for build personal philosophy. The meaning of Self-Help Book is to self improvement, Genre – non fictional book. Self –help books often focus on popular psychology such as romantic relationship, or aspects of the mind and human behavior. In On@tcc God’s call it shows the moral massage and it developed self confidence of characters.We see that all character suffer in their life. Also these all problems we find in our real life and also in the society. With help of the type of book we find solution of the problem. Chetan Bhagat’s present the real life situation of the people and how they all manage the life.

We can say that Chetan's God becomes a mouthpiece for his self help - 'listen to the inner call'. It is about inner call or inner voice. A self-help book is one that is written with the intention to instruct its readers on solving personal problems. God’s call it is a kind of a help, or it can be interpreted in many ways. God’s call pays the path, he shows just the path, but then all characters help themselves. In this way we can take this book as a self help book also.

Conclusion:

So, At the end we can say that a different interpretation and the theme like Deus ex Machina, Human Relations, Strategic, Love, Sex and Marriage of this novel’s like  shows different ideas of our surrounding problems and also their solutions. In short The aim of  Bhagat’s to write this Novel  is to convey a message to the people of India from the situation of the characters like the harshness of the situation of women in India.

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