Globalization a rich topic for young Indian writers By Peter McCarthy

dpa German Press Agency
Published: Friday October 6, 2006

By Peter McCarthy, Frankfurt- Outsourcing and globalization and their impact on India have provided fertile ground for a new generation of writers from the subcontinent. Official figures show that over one million people work in India's booming IT industry, a significant number of them in the call centre business, which provides the perfect literary vehicle for exploring themes such as the relationship between India and the West.

Recent novels on the subject include One Night at the Call Centre by Delhi-born Chetan Bhagat and Neelesh Misra's Once Upon A Timezone, which was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week.

Misra, a 33-year-old journalist and Bollywood song writer who was born in Lucknow, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa: "Globalization has affected us all, for good or bad. It's a theme waiting to be written about."

His novel's protagonist, Neel Pandey, works in a New Delhi call centre and dreams every night of America, "the land to which he believed he belonged, but had never visited."

"Neel loved everything about America: its style, its accent, its women, its sports, its technical superiority and material wealth. He wanted to migrate there. He wanted to marry an American girl and make a stackload of dollars."

Neel can't help comparing the poverty of India with US prosperity and "it made him dislike his nation."

These kinds of attitudes can be common among the Westernized young Indians who work in call centres, Misra says. "Infatuated with the West," they can end up "blindly aping US society."

Call centre workers in Indian cities like Delhi and Bangalore live double lives, sleeping by day when the rest of India is awake, assuming Western identities at night to answer questions about insurance or bills from customers in the US and Britain.

To converse successfully the Indian workers are expected to adopt US names and accents and even celebrate US customs like Halloween - ripe territory for any writer.

The protagonist in Misra's novel adopts the persona of smooth- talking American Neil Patterson at night and ends up falling in love with an American caller who doesn't know his real identity.

Outsourcing has its advantages and disadvantages for India. On the one hand call centre jobs are well paid for India, have a certain glamour and are easy to get for young people with good English just out of college.

On the downside there is frequent worker burnout with most employees leaving within a couple of years, and the risk that infatuation with the West will lead to disenchantment with India and a desire to emigrate, fuelling a brain-drain of the brightest and best young Indians.

India's IT boom has another "far reaching impact," says Misra - well paid jobs bring sudden independence for young people from the traditional family unit, a fundamental change in Indian society which older generations find hard to come to terms with.

Whatever form it takes in future, globalization is surely here to stay. The outsourcing trend and India's economic rise are likely to see more and more Westerners talking on the phone to Indians, probably without even realizing it - perfect material for India's fiction writers.

© 2006 dpa German Press Agency