Authors: Vikas Swarup
'Really?'
'Yes. But this is extra. It will cost you another 2,500 rupees. So
if you take it, you will need to pay me a total of five thousand
now.'
It took me less than a minute to decide I wanted that number.
I forked out five grand from my wallet. The PI counted the notes
and put them in his coat pocket.
'Write it down,' he said, reading from a piece of paper. 'It is
98333 81234. Got it? I have got this number with great difficulty.
So please use it with discretion.'
'Can I try it right now from a PCO?'
'You can, but you won't get her. I've found out that Shabnam
has gone to Cape Town to shoot a film. The mobile will start
working only when she returns to India. You can try the number
after a week or so.' He knotted his hands. 'Will that be all?'
'Yeah. Thanks for all your help.' I got up.
'Let me wish you the very best, Mr Larry,' the PI said and
shook my hand vigorously. 'Your girlfriend is every Indian's dream
girl. I feel very envious of you. Very envious indeed.'
I stepped out of his office, happy as a pig in manure. For the
first time, things seemed to be looking up.
I bought an expensive Nokia that very afternoon, together
with a pre-paid card. Then, sitting in my room, I dialled the
number with shaking fingers. The call went through, but no one
picked up the phone. After a while a recorded voice told me, 'The
subscriber you have dialled is presently not available. Please try
again later.'
Disappointed, I hung up. The PI was right. I would have to try
later. A whole week later.
I carefully put the little slip of paper with Shabnam's number
in my wallet, and that's when I discovered that the wallet was
almost empty. I had only got a thousand rupees and two hundred
dollars left. And I had to survive another forty days in this city. So
that evening I turned to Bilal in the TV lounge.
'Is there anyone here who might require the services of a forklift
driver, you reckon? I need to make some quick cash.'
'You don't need to drive forklifts in India. You can do much
better as an English teacher here,' he said. 'Let's find you a job.'
He picked up a newspaper from the centre table and flipped
through it. 'Here, this might be just the job for you.' He pointed
out an advert in the 'Job Openings' section:
Wanted:Voice & Accent Trainers for a leading BPO.
Job Requirement: Conduct refresher training on
Phonetics, Grammar & Culture as and when
needed. Complete daily tracking, including end-ofday
course evaluations and trainee assessments.
Qualifications: No prior experience or specialization
needed. Good command of American English
the only pre-requisite. Apply with resumé and
references for immediate position.
The advertisement was as clear as mud to me. 'What the hell's
a BPO?' I asked.
'Business Process Outsourcing. A fancy name for a call centre,'
said Bilal. 'You should get the job easily. All you need to do is
speak like an American.' He told me not to worry about the
resumé and references, but just to go for the interview.
I spent the rest of the week waiting for the week to end. Every
day I tried Shabnam's number no less than fifty times and every
time I got the same recorded message. I finally lost my patience
when I got the recorded message even after ten days. So I marched
back to the Shylock Detective Agency and found the office locked
and all boarded up. There was a printed notice fluttering on the
door. It said 'Prime Office Space. For immediate rent/sale –
Contact Navneet Properties 98333 45371.' I called up the
number and was told that Mr Gupta had vacated his rented office
and gone somewhere without any forwarding address.
For the first time, the thought entered my mind that the PI
might have been as crooked as a dog's hind leg. And that he may
have given me a bum steer. But the Lord never closes one door
without opening another one. As I was returning, I spotted a
magazine called
Filmfare
at a bookstand with Shabnam's picture
on the cover, and bought it.
Mizz Henrietta Loretta, our Third Grade teacher, taught us
about a crazy dude called Archie-something who lived long, long
ago in some country called Grease. The fellow dived into a bathtub
and was the first to discover that water starts overflowing
from a tub when you fill it too much. He got so excited he jumped
out of the tub, naked as a jay bird, shouting 'Eureka! Eureka!'
That's exactly what I felt like doing on reading the article about
Shabnam Saxena. Coz what I discovered in that magazine was
nothing short of a gold mine. It gave the whole life story of the
actress and was word for word exactly the same as the story told
me by that PI. My respect for Mr Gupta went up a couple of
notches. The guy was right on the money. But the magazine had
two additional pieces of info Mr Gupta hadn't given me. It had
Shabnam's address in Mumbai and even her birthday – 17 March,
which happened to be exactly the same as the birthday given to
me by Sapna Singh. That was the clincher which convinced me
that Sapna and Shabnam were one and the same. I felt so happy,
I guzzled down four cans of Coke!
That night I sat down at the desk in my room, took out a piece
of paper and began composing a letter to Shabnam. 'My dearest
darling Shabnam,' I began. 'I reckon a love like ours is as scarce as
hen's teeth,' and before I knew it, I'd filled twenty pages. I
put them all in an envelope, marked it 'Highly Confidential',
wrote Shabnam's address and posted it first thing in the morning.
The next day, I wrote another letter to Shabnam. And then it
became as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. In a week's time, I'd
spent more cash on postage than on food and I was down to
borrowing money from Bilal.
'You better get that BPO job,' he warned me.
So on 25 October I landed up in Connaught Place for the
interview in my best clothes. I was shown into a swanky office
with glitzy paintings, plush leather seats and a pretty receptionist.
The person conducting the interviews was a balding guy in his
forties called Bill Bakshi. He sat behind a polished steel table
dressed in denim jeans, a Buffalo Bills sweatshirt and a Yankees
baseball cap. He looked at me with a puzzled expression. 'Mr
Larry Page . . . I thought you would be an Indian Christian from
Goa. But you look American. Is that right?' He spoke like one of
those damn Yankees from New York.
'Yeah. I'm American. Always have been. Is that a problem?'
'No . . . no . . . not at all,' he said quickly. 'In fact, what could
be better for us than having an American to teach the American
accent? I am assuming you are a true blue American, someone
who has actually lived in the US?'
'Yeah. I'm just visiting India. I live in Waco in Texas.'
He smiled, stretched his legs and put his hands behind his
head. 'I am a Buffalo Bills fan, as you can see. How about you,
Larry? Are you into American football?'
'You telling me! Being from the great State of Texas, I support
America's team, the Dallas Cowboys – only team in NFL history
to have won three Super Bowls in four years.'
'And what about the Houston Texans?'
'Sorry to say, but they are a shit team.'
'Why do you say that?'
'Coz they lose all their games. They had their chances in the
2004 season but the 22–14 loss to the Cleveland Browns sealed
their fate. Since then the team's been pretty much in self-destruct
mode. I mean the whole decision to draft Mario Williams as the
number-one pick in preference to Reggie Bush or Vince Young
was probably the biggest mistake in NFL draft history. The guy
can't hit the broadside of a barn!'
'Wow, you seem to know the history of the NFL by heart. Do
you have any previous industry experience?'
'Well, this ain't my first rodeo. I've been working with
Walmart for nearly five years now.'
'Walmart? Mr Larry Page, you are hired. Welcome aboard.' He
got up to shake my hand.
'Gee, thanks. But what am I supposed to do? I mean, can you
tell me a little bit about your company?'
'Of course. Rai IT Solutions is a BPO company. We do many
things for our overseas clients. We sell telephone services, handle
consumer complaints, conduct market research, make airline
bookings, compute income tax and process insurance claims. But
our biggest operation is in geographic information systems. Our
largest client is the ARA – American Roadside Assistance. You've
heard of them?'
'Yeah. But our company vehicles have contracts with the
Triple A.'
'Well, the ARA is very similar to the AAA. Now imagine yourself
to be a customer of the ARA. Suppose your car breaks down
or your subscription expires or you are lost on the highway.'
'Whereabouts on the highway?'
'Doesn't really matter. You can be lost in Alaska or Hawaii, for
that matter. We've got all the road atlases. So what do you do
when you get lost? You call a 1-800 number. That call comes to
us, to our call centre in Gurgaon. And it is our customer-support
associates who help out the American customer. The trick is not
to let on that we are answering the call in India. The customer
should think the call is being answered in America by Americans.
That's where you come in.'
'Gee, to be honest, I'm not all that good at giving directions. I
mean I get lost myself all the time on the I-35. Once I took just
one wrong exit and ended up in New Mexico.'
'No, Larry. We are not asking you to work as a
customer-support associate. We want you to be their accent
trainer only. You need to teach our new call-centre employees
everything about America – how Americans talk, what they play,
what they eat, what they watch, so that when Deepak from
Moradabad says he is Derek from Milwaukee, the caller in the US
should not doubt him. Do you think you can help us do that?'
'You bet. Sounds like a piece of cake.'
'Perfect. Now see, an Indian would never use an expression
like "piece of cake".' He slapped his thighs. 'A white American as
our accent trainer . . . We've hit the bloody jackpot!' He leaned
towards me. 'I hope you know that call centres in India work the
graveyard shift – from eight p.m. to eight a.m. Will that be a
problem?'
'Nah. I'll just sleep during the day. By the way, how much
moolah will I be making on this job?'
'Well, we pay our Indian accent trainers twenty thousand
rupees per month. For you we can go up to thirty thousand. Is that
acceptable?'
Thirty grand! That meant I'd have enough money to go home
in a month.
'When do I start?' I asked.
I began working for Rai IT Solutions the very next day, in their
office complex in Gurgaon. A company van picked me up daily
from Paharganj at seven p.m. and took me on an hour's drive, past
the international airport, to a bustling city full of shopping malls
and high-rise buildings. Gurgaon looked more like Dallas than
Delhi.
The office complex was pretty impressive too. All tinted glass
and marble. Inside, the call centre was just like a Walmart shop
floor, a huge air-conditioned space with row upon row of cubicles
with computers. There were hundreds of young Indians sitting on
swivel chairs in front of the computer screens with telephone
headsets on. The place hummed like a giant beehive and looked
busier than a strip joint on buck night.
My job involved teaching a bunch of smart young boys and
gals to speak like Americans. I started off with the brass tacks.
'There are three kinds of students,' I told the class.'One, those that
learn by reading. Two, those that learn by observing. The rest have
to pee on the electric fence by themselves.'
A pretty young thing in a tight little T-shirt put up her hand.
'Excuse me, Professor Page, what does peeing on an electric fence
mean?'
Professor Page? My head got all swole up just hearing that
word. I wished Mom could have been here to see her son being
called Professor. 'It means, there ain't nothing in life worth your
while that don't come hard, you understand? So you keep practising
and quick as a hiccup you are gonna start to talk like me.OK
folks, time to paint your butts white and run with the antelope.'
It was as easy as that. Quickest thirty grand I've ever made in
my life. The rest of my job involved sitting in an office on the mezzanine
floor with a headset over my ears, watching the activity in
the shop floor, listening in on the chatter, marking crosses against
those 'customer-support associates' whose English and manners
were not up to speed.
The whole call-centre thing amazed me. Here were Indian
boys and gals with perfectly good Indian names who were becoming
Robert and Susan and Jason and Jane during the night. In fact
there were strict rules that they had to call each other by their
American names even during the tea and dinner breaks.
'That's the problem,' a supervisor by the name of Mr Devdutt
told me. He was a short guy in his fifties, with a crew-cut and
wire-rimmed spectacles. 'These kids think they've really become
Americans. Not only do they talk and dress like Americans, they
are now even going out on dates like Americans. I work in the callcentre
industry, Mr Page, but I will never allow my daughter to
join it.'
'Why not?'
'Because call centres have become dens of vice and corruption.
You don't know what I have to deal with every day. How can I
enforce discipline when I have girls coming in dressed like
prostitutes? They wear low-cut tops showing their breasts. One
came wearing jeans so low, I could see her underwear. I have
conducted random searches of girls' handbags and found condoms
in there with their lipsticks. I have a strong suspicion that some of
the associates are having sex in the toilets during the dinner
break.'
'That's nothing,' I told him. 'Back home, I've seen boys and
gals making out in the classrooms of Richfield High.'