After almost 6 months of not reading any book , I read this book a few days back .

I had
earlier read Chetan Bhagats 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
Shyams 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 Bhagats 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 Bhagats 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 .
 The complete review's Review:
The fact that One night @ the call center was an enormous success in India is
bizarre and troubling. ON@TCC, as it is apparently popularly known as (so popular as
to be known by its acronym !), might seem a feel-good story about Indian
empowerment in a globalized world, but Bhagat finds no other way to reach a happy
end but through a ridiculous deus ex machina and a series of morally reprehensible
acts. One might be able to forgive him invoking god -- the ultimate fall-back guy
when nothing else works -- but the mean-spirited and outrageous means he chooses
for his characters to find happiness and satisfaction is beyond contempt (and, almost
worst of all, also entirely unrealistic: it would have been self-defeating, and not
achieved the (happy-)ends he suggests).
The novel has a Prologue, in which author Chetan Bhagat encounters a beautiful
woman on a train trip. She offers to tell him a story -- but will do so only on the
condition that he use it for his next book. It's set at a call centre, describing the events
of a single night-shift -- and she warns him (and the readers) to expect at least one
unusual occurrence:
It was the night ... it was the night there was a phone call from God.
That's a lot of pressure to put on a book -- and since the phone call only comes on
page 241, that's also an awful lot of suspense to leave the reader in for a very long
time. But one should be grateful for small favours: the book isn't very good up to that
point, but passable. Once the big guy in the sky calls it spirals completely out of
control.
The story is narrated by Shyam Mehra, who works at the Connections call centre.
Here Indians man the phones all night, fielding calls from American consumers who
are having trouble with their electronic goods. The company is kept afloat by its
account with Western Computers and Appliances, but isn't doing spectacularly well
("call volumes are at an all-time low -- Connections is doomed") and there's talk of
"rightsizing" (meaning downsizing). Shyam works in the WASG bay -- the Western
Appliances Strategic Group, handling home appliance issues -- people having trouble
with their refrigerators, ovens, and vacuum cleaners.
The novel focusses on Shyam and a handful of his colleagues -- a motley crew of
Indians who, for a variety of reasons, have wound up in the same job.
Shyam is lacking self-confidence, but does have some greater ambitions: he has
been working with a colleague on a website for the company which will make it easier
for customers to get the assistance they need. Complicating matters, one of the women
he works with is a former girlfriend, Priyanka -- and there are several flashback
chapters interspersed among the present-time ones describing some of their past dates
(awful stuff, leaving the reader baffled as to what he sees in her -- and also not carried
through very far: there are only a few of these chapters, leading pretty much
nowhere). But the big problem at work is the bad and incompetent boss, Bakshi (who,
they eventually find out, is going to take credit for the website design for himself,
getting a transfer to Boston in the deal).
For quite a while ON@TCC is fairly predictable: the characters and their personal
stories are introduced, the bad boss is shown being bad, the American callers are
hapless. Bhagat doesn't do any of this particularly well, but it's modestly engaging,
and there seem to be some possibilities. Priyanka's sudden engagement to a Microsoft-
man she's never seen stirs things up, and each of the characters has his or her own
story which Bhagat at least offers a glimpse of. He's at his best in describing the
workplace-silliness -- dealing with customers and bosses -- though not particularly
creative or imaginative.
Bhagat has a self-righteous and -important streak that undermines much of his
possibly valid social criticism. Claims of intellectual superiority hardly mask the
pathetic inferiority complex they all seem to suffer from. At Connections they're
taught:
the brain and IQ of a thirty-five-year-old American is the same as the brain of a ten-year-old Indian. This will help
you understand your clients. You need to be as patient with them as you are when dealing with a child. Americans
are stupid, just accept it.
Unfortunately, these Indians aren't exactly bright lights either. But how much
easier to blame sinister and worthless distant entities (with local bad bosses tossed in
for good measure): tweak the complaint and it sounds like Americans complaining
about illegal immigrants:
Meanwhile bad bosses and stupid Americans suck the blood out of our country's most productive generation.
Bhagat raises valid issues and concerns -- but doesn't take them in the least
seriously, offering neither reasonable descriptions of the issues, nor any sensible way
of dealing with them.
And then there's that call from god. Bhagat redeems himself ever so slightly by
suggesting in his Epilogue that there is an alternate explanation for that particular
episode -- but he doesn't embrace it (because he (mistakenly) believes this version is
the "better story"), and in fact opts for the god-line there as well.
What need there is for god here is unclear. Sure, all these characters have
problems, but the hokey solution -- god tells them "the most important call in the
world" is the "inner call" (get it ? get it ?), that voice telling them what they really
want -- is presented so ridiculously that even a child-reader would roll his or her eyes.
If that were all, one could almost let the novel pass: pretty damn bad, but as a
toss-away read about Indians dealing with a rapidly modernizing world of some mild
interest. But Bhagat has to tie things up too, and there he goes off the deep and very
wrong end.
The characters apparently listen to their inner call and what it tells them is that the
way to act is as irresponsibly and unethically as possible. Their boss gets his
comeuppance through a faked e-mail -- not entirely plausible, but maybe some might
consider it just, since he stooped to similar levels. But in their efforts to save the call
centre and all the jobs there they come up with the most outrageous and offensive
conceivable plan (one which also suffers for not being very plausible). Yes, they
unleash Operation Yankee Fear, whose:
single aim is to increase the incoming call traffic in the Connections call center, capitalizing on Americans being the
biggest cowards on the planet.
It is a stupid and an offensive idea. Followed through, it would lead to the almost
immediate end of Connections (and an enormous lawsuit by Western Computers and
Appliances), as when people and the media realized what was going on -- and they
would, after a few hours -- they would turn on everyone involved with a vengeance.
Worse, it is a contemptible act. These are characters who were recently in touch
with god ? Any deity with any sense of right and wrong would see to it that these
fools suffer hellishly for the rest of their days (and then karma would see to it that
they are resurrected as the lowliest of pond scum).
So what's astonishing about ON@TCC is that its author thought this was
somehow funny or acceptable (it is neither) -- and, more disturbingly, that this
morally reprehensible message has resonated so well in India. Far from showing the
superiority of the locals, Bhagwat's tale has them embrace all things Western -- and
then sink below the level of what they complain is the worst about the West. There is
no interest in any moral high ground here: coming out on top is all that counts,
regardless of who gets hurt along the way.
Shyam concludes his account:
This means that i) I can do whatever I really want, ii) God is always with me and iii) there is no such thing as a loser
after all.
The first lesson isn't much of one: if the cost of doing what he really wants
involves the moral compromises he makes here then he is just contemptible. As to the
god he believes is always with him, that's a personal sort of deity that bears more
resemblance to a genie that doesn't ask (or ask of its master) any of the hard (or even
the easy) questions about morals responsibility in any human community: a personal
god tailored solely to his well-being and happiness, the rest of the world be damned.
And since everyone in the book (and especially the Western Computers and
Appliances customers) except him and his few co-workers are losers in one sense or
another the last lesson isn't much of one either. But then he's incapable of seeing any
big picture beyond himself.
Shyam does not make a good hero: far from deserving success, happiness, and
love one almost wishes misery on him. He certainly has no problem wishing it (and
causing it) on many others.
Silly books with silly ideas are common enough, but this is among the more
outrageous ones we've seen in a while. But what is truly troubling is that it was a
success in India, that there were readers who apparently bought into this and who
approve of what happens. It's shocking, and disappointing.
It's a shame, too, because in its outlines ON@TCC has lots of potential. The
characters one finds working in these places, the cross-cultural issues (some of which
he even manages to begin to convey), the different faces of modernizing India, the
family pressures on (especially) women: Bhagat even lays a decent foundation. But in
going completely overboard (god ! Operation Yankee Fear !) he undoes all of the
promise of the book, and with his morally defective happy end sends such a wrong
message that one has to condemn the whole exercise.
Book Review: One night @ the call center
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November 03, 2005 06:29 IST

Bestseller lists have been making a killing off Chetan Bhagat, and publishers Rupa seem
to have found themselves a worthy successor to Anurag Mathur (The Inscrutable
Americans), who, hopefully, will prove to be for them what Shobhaa De is to Penguin
India.

Seventy weeks and still selling strong, Five Point Someone is raking in the royalties for
this Singapore-based IIT/IIM alumnus, and his new book seems likely to join his first
offering rather than displace it from the Top Ten countdowns in magazines and
newspapers.

Obviously, Bhagat is good, but having read the book in one sitting, I fail to understand
what makes him such a wet dream for publishers. Or, perhaps, I need to re-word that-- I
cannot fathom why the book is receiving rave notices when from structure to
characterisation, it seems so obviously flawed.

And, very possibly, I might be in a minority of one when I say this-- a colleague thinks
the book is 'brilliant' and full of witty one-liners (really? I must be a particularly dense
reader); and my son thought it 'fab' (which doesn't say much for him or his reading
tastes)-- but when Bhagat's being touted as the Next Big Thing in IWE (which, for those
of us who dislike acronyms, means Indian Writers in English), you begin to wonder. For
what, after all, are IRE-Indian Readers in English-to make of it? Yes, this is a thoroughly
entertaining read (oh, I give it that) but must it have pretensions to literature?

Consider the characters-- a 'loser-type' hero (my son's words), a behenji-turned-mod

heroine, and a cast that includes someone stuck in a bad marriage (with a cheating
husband to boot), a wannabe model who sleeps her way to the assignment she never
gets, a Casanova who secretly pines for the model, a jargon-spewing boss who's as slimy
as he's sleazy, and a 'Military Uncle' who, by now, should be expected, in this retinue of
caricatures, to have his dirty secret-- having to earn a living because he's thrown out by
his son and daughter-in-law (whatever happened to his pension?).

By way of a plot, the surmise is to do a 'day in the life of', but this is where the story falls
apart. The love story gone awry, the secret trysts in flashbacks, the underhand attempts
to sell out the company, and its 'heroic' saving by these protagonists form the storyline.
For some degree of angst (you need evil, after all) you have Uncle Sam, Big Brother or
the Ugly American-- take your pick, there's no difference.

For poor Vroom (yes, that's a name), his deepest suffering is having to work in a call
centre where the money is good, so he can buy all things American even though he
doesn't particularly like the Americans, poor dear.

But flawed or not, the book works, particularly for those in the 18-25-year age group in
the same way that Mills & Boons romances used to work for us when we would raid the
bookshelves just before the exams to read something (anything) that would take our
mind off theorems and definitions, the one-hour guide to relaxation that was chicken
soup for the brain (though not, it must be pointed out, as nourishing).

Clearly, One Night @ The Call Center has its audience well defined-those who swot
nights at call centres and have little to show for it but Adidas shoes to wear to work,
and One Night @ The Call Center to read.

Other colleagues have cribbed about its lack of substance, the wonder of its awful ending
and the sheer mechanics of so much happening in one night (Psst! Editor: you should
have watched the timeline a little more carefully).

Bhagat might have got under the skin of what life at a call centre is like, but so could any
journalist. While many of us (obviously older types) can only wonder at how the group
of seven seems to have spent its working night gossiping or going out on drinking
binges, it's clear the book is an eminent bathroom read, to be thrown away after and
forgotten.
So far it has been a phenomenon in search of a balladeer. Tom Friedman has given the world a
parachute view of it, while Hari Kunzru's Transmission has used it as a minor distraction in a
novel that seemed like a checklist of everything a reader needs to know about contemporary
India.
In cinema, there have been two notable attempts to chronicle the outsourced Indian-the yet-to-be
released feature film American Daylight, and Toronto Film Festival's documentary hit, Ashim
Ahluwalia's John & Jane.

Which is what makes Chetan Bhagat's one night@the call center (or ON@TCC, as he likes to
call it) so vital. Unpretentiously written, studded with dialogue worthy of a moderately enjoyable
crossover film, the novel will probably find its way into the bookshelves of the very community
it ever so often trashes-the marketeers always in search of the magic youth demographic flush
with call-centre cash.

Do not for a moment expect deep character sketches or profound insights into the enormous
sociological changes that a generation of bright under-achievers are going through, working in
hi-tech versions of Dickensian sweatshops, selling and servicing ovens, dishwashers and
refrigerators.
It is Bhagat's sobering snapshots of the reality of India Shining's IT revolution that has the reader
addicted. As in Bhagat's Five Point Someone, there is a stereotype for everyone - Shyam, the
good worker with low self-esteem; Vroom, the angry child of divorced parents; Priyanka, the
pretty young thing under pressure to marry well (but one who has no qualms about downing
vodka shots and "doing it" in the backseat of a Qualis); Radhika, the dutiful woman who marries
beneath her and then gets dumped; Esha, the small-town glam girl with a navel ringwhowants to
be a model and ends up sleeping for it; and the overaged Military Uncle, who reflects the graying
of call centres in a high turnover market.

So how did an investment banker who has worked in Hong Kong and Singapore for the past
eight years manage to eavesdrop on the noisy world of text messages, pub crawls, wobbly
English, perfect American accents, multiplex/mall dates and serial affairs?
Bhagat, a personable and rather bouncy 31-year-old who seems so tireless that it is exhausting,
has a gift for tapping into the zeitgeist. Five Point Someone, a novel which was a thinly veiled
account of the IIT-IIM graduate's years at IIT-Delhi, is still selling (apparently 1.35 lakh copies
and counting), not surprising given the hunger for anything connected to the engineering
institutes.
It is a book that has taken Bhagat, who symbolises the hip rebranding of IITs, from talks at IIT-
Kanpur to discussions at Step by Step school in Jaipur, where a Class VII student asked him,
"Sir, who do you love more? Neha (his heroine in Five Point Someone) or your wife?"

Bhagat researched his second novel for over six months and spent a year writing it. He was
helped by his sistersin-law (both of them work in call centres) as well as an array of cousins. "It
is a surreal sort of life, not a career as much as an income-earner, and executing it as a novel was
tough, given that every day is almost like the other."
But Bhagat says he was driven by an almost missionary obsession to tell the story of an entire
generation being forced into a virtual boot camp to service dumb Americans. As Vroom puts it in
the book, "All of us, up all night, providing crutches for the white morons to run their livesdo
jobs we hate so that we can buy stuff-junk food, coloured fizzy water, dumbass credit cards and
over priced shoes."
Says Bhagat: "I could have tried to get a huge advance from an international publisher and got
into the cocktail circuit, but I genuinely wanted to do something meaningful. We have so many
young people and yet a government run by old people cannot provide real jobs for them."

Such undergraduate zeal finds its way into the book as well, which probably makes the climax-a
call from God which shows every protagonist the way forward-a bit difficult to digest. But such
is the enthusiasm of Bhagat's writing (his inspirations are as varied as Joseph Heller and DBC
Pierre) and so interesting are the nuggets (from a tour of Delhi's dating hot spots to New Age
gifts like ringtone downloads) that the book is what the writer promises: good entertainment,
away from the "done-to-death plot of the immigrant's tension in a foreign land".

Like his first novel, it is also somewhat cathartic for Bhagat, who says he turned to writing as a
form of therapy becausehewasconstantlyundermined by a "mean and stupid boss". Not much of
awriting type in school, he claims he was more the kind who made people laugh by talking and
misbehaving nonstop, "the kind of student whose parents get embarrassed when they come for
PTA meetings, because there are so many complaints".

Well, no one's complaining now. Except perhaps the unfortunate Americans.

After the success of Five point someone, Chetan Bhagats second venture, One Night @ the Call Centre is a 289
pager. A tale of six people working in a call centre called Connexions located in Gurgaon. The characters are
Shyam, Varun, Esha, Priyanka, Radhika and a Military Uncle. Its a story of their pain, sorrows, ambitions, love life,
personal trauma and the happiness they share together.
One Night @ The Call Center revolves around six people, three men and three female to be precise, working in the
same group in a call center. Though distinctly different in all aspects there was something which bound these folks
together their messed up lives. The plot is unique with the God Element. However immature the thought is yet it has
attracted viewers by providing them a unique way for the redressal of their grievances. The inter-twining lives of these
people are analysed by the author and presented in a urban setting of the new emerging global India found in most
metro cities. This time again, Bhagat is clever enough to tap audiences and thereby making the book a marketable
success.

A read which I again is NOT meant for the reader but one who is travelling on a metro ride from NOIDA City Centre to
HUDA City Centre, after work in the comfort of the cool air in the metro. The language is simple, contains witty
remarks on relationships and urban culture, mentioning vernacular words to increase the readability factor in the
book. Most Bhagat novels are audience centric and not literary centric. One Night @ Call centre passes the litmus
test too.
Book Review - One Night at a Call Center by Chetan
Bhagat
Uday Sankar Yerramilli 12:45 AM Book Reviews

Tagline: If God were John Galt, Chetan would be Ayn Rand.

This is the third Chetan Bhagats book that I happened to read after five point someone and the latest temptation (I
wouldnt like to call it a sensation, Sorry, ardent fans of Chetan Bhagat) Revolution 2020. Five point someone was
so realistic and Revolution 2020 was so filmy that I did not feel like writing a review. ONACC has however
provoked me to showcase my mental prowess, and here it is.

Chetan Bhagat is travelling from Kanpur to Delhi when he comes upon this interesting girl who narrates him a story
on condition that he writes it as his next book. And thus begins the story.
The story is a first person narration by Shyam, the protagonist. The story is about 6 members of a call center in
Delhi and the incidents that happen to them in a single night while ON DUTY. Shyam Radhika, Priyanka, Vroom,
Esha and Military Uncle. They have been leading their own happy lives despite some disturbances when a few
incidents on that night unravel some horrifying truths in front of them. A loyal wife getting to know about her
husbands love interest, a ready-to-settle-in-life girl getting to know about her Ex eavesdropping on her phone calls,
an ambitious girl turned psychopath revealing some dark secrets of her other career, a strict military man waiting
badly to speak to his grandson, two very-hoping-to-be-successful guys knowing how they have been beaten by their
boss wits, and amidst all these disasters happening simultaneously, they get into a car which meets with an
accident and as they lose hope, they receive a call from GOD.

This book definitely gives us a feel of the lives of Call Center Executives and the issues they live with, in general.
Aliased names and fake smiles, stressed lives and artificial foods, night Through the 6 main characters, the author
tried to portray the various kinds of personalities. He also attempted to make the book a tool of self-help; the author
invites the readers to think of aspects that make us angry and that we would want to change.
Chetan tried to maintain the suspense of the Gods Call till the end, It looked like he desperately tried to ape Ayn
Rand, the way she maintained her John Galts Speech in Atlas Shrugged. However, the conversation appeared more
mundane and rhetorical. The way he portrayed each of the characters suddenly realizing something and deciding to
act on it appeared very abrupt. Well, it may so happen when someone comes across a life-threatening experience,
however, the slot did not seem so convincing.

To summarize, what starts on an interesting and a pragmatic note ends in a simple and impractical episode which
seems unconvincing. ONACC is hence, a one-time read for those who just want to spend one of their sleepless
nights.
Chetan Bhagats second book is more of a film script unintentionally sent to the
publisher; obviously it failed to impress me in any way. Five point someone was good, it
had an insiders account of IIT and one could easily relate to the characters and more
than everything Five point someone did not have brainless flow of narration. One night
at call centre fails miserably on this point, the narration is too inane to accept being true
as vouched by the author.

ON@CC is a story of some call centre employees staring at downsizing and a rude
bossy boss, Mr. Bakshi. Characterization is not too bad, but the narration is completely
immature and foolish. The anti-American approach and the assumption of all-
Americans-are-fools may not go well with everyone. As usual, like what you see in the
movies there is a romantic story dragged along with the main story. The broken
romantic relationship between two of the call centre employees is restored in the most
absurd way one could imagine, I cant even imagine how the author thought of such a
notion to spoil a marriage. And finally to manage the downsizing they find a ridiculous
and completely unacceptable way to make a happy and lived happily ever after sort of
climax.

I would like to hear views from people who liked reading this book..
One Night @ The Call Center
Review
Swayamprava / 9 yrs ago /
37

One night @ the call center Review

by

Swayamprava

Amongst the contemporary writers, who has earned a different name and made their
distinction in the literal world is Chetan Bhagat. The novel One Night @ the Call Center
deals with the problems in a call center and related problems, frustration, emotion and
office politics in very fascinating manner. The novel revolves around a group of six call
center employees working in Connections call center in the Delhi. It is filled with a lot of
drama with unpleasant things happening to all of the leading characters. The story takes
a dramatic and decisive turn when they get a phone call from God.

The story begins with a train journey from Kanpur to Delhi. During the journey, the
author meets a very beautiful girl. The girl seems to be quite caring, demanding and
very intelligent. She offers to tell the author a story on the condition that he has to make
it into his second book. After a lot of hesitation, the author agrees. This description itself
is so captivating and tempting that it immediately catches the imagination of the reader.
At the end what happens to the girl that is a big mystery..

The author personifies himself with the hero of the novel. Claimed to be based on a true
story, the author chooses a person named Shyam Mehra alias Sam Marcy as the
protagonist, who is one among the six call center employees featuring in the novel. The
remaining are Esha Singh (Eliza Singer), Radhika Jha (Regina Jones), Varun "Vroom"
Malhotra (Victor Mell), Priyanka and Military Uncle. All of them belong to the same team
and their manager is a person named Subhash Bakshi, who is the negative character in
the novel. He is a very cunning with a very peculiar both physically and mentally and a
very shrewd guy. The description of Bakshi was like something like a mini hippo with
slick and slithering dark skin shining with oil and his habits are atypical itself.

Shyam and Priyankas love story is so gripping that one can just visualize things like a
film. Priyanks proposed marriage with an NRI,, her bubbly talks with him leaving Shyam
to utmost distress, Vroom and his feelings for Esha, Radhikas unique dedication to her
family and in-laws and last but not the least Military uncles agony, who fails to comply
with the modern life and leads a lonesome life without his son and daughter-in law
.the story just revolves around with a touch and go like description but still clarifies
every thing. The whole plot is very intelligently conceived and crafted, I would say.

The last scene when they all, out of sheer frustration, were about to had a great fall,
then they happened to listen the phone call from God. Or its their own inner voice.this
was also a great mystery When man literally confronts with death what will be his
thought and what will be his state of mind it is describes so beautifully that you just
think and think.In reality life is like that, when one confronts with death, that time he
really releases himself from the self made cocoon and rifts apart his mask and hears the
real voice of his heart and mind.

The novel is a wonder. Language is very simple; thoughts are awesome and very very
modern in its approach. The novel is really nice and it will leave with a feeling that
modernity has got nothing to do with lifes philosophy. I dont know whether it is a best
seller or not but I will suggest everybody should read this, It is too good.
Chetan Bhagat does it again. A simple novel about India and most
importantly Indians. Sadly the similarity with his first novel ends there.
This book is slow and definately not the cannot keep it down type. To
be fair to Chetan the book is good and does tell a good story, A story
worth reading and probably even learning something from. Frankly I
was willing to give this book a *** rating but the last page of the
Epilogue cost the book a * and made me fell like throwing the book out
a window.

I have marked a section of this review as SPOILERS if you want to

read this book desperately just skip that part

The story is about 6 people who work at the call center, set in one
night. The catch is they get a call. (I know ur going wtf dont call
centers get calls all the time). Well this one was from God..
That was enuf to get me to read the book and considering 5 point
someone was simply brilliant this was not a tough book to pick up.
The good stuff in the book is simple Chetan Bhagats writing which is
spectacular as usual. The hidden sarcasm and smart comments in the
book make you laugh more than once.

The book starts off very slow and the first 100 pages are simply
boring The book slowly picks up pace and somewhere towards the
end you actually start enjoying the book. As usual Chetans
explanation of the chars is immaculate. I kindof want this book to be
made into a movie just to see Priyankas nose(it is explained so well).
The feeling of the chars to one another is clear and untainted from the
story. The story line of 6 different people with their own worlds is well
explained and beautiful to read

Skip Spoilers
**SPOILERS**

The choice of Shyam as the narrator was brilliant. How well Esha,
Priyanka, Vroom, Radika and Military uncle were explained is another
plus point of this book. About the book itself
Firstly the dates explained was almost unwanted. I felt it was done to
give the book a decent amount of size but it was hardly 10 pages. I did
enjoy parts of 2nd date(when Priyanka screams at the family) and the
3rd date(confined spacesneed not say more).

Everything seemed ok considering I dont know much about call

centers and how they work untill the call For the love of god(no pun
intended), the book actually got a bit more interesing after this. I
enjoyed the part about the Bakshi(their boss) getting his just desserts.
Their determination and presence of mind during the last part of the
book is great and I did feel good for a couple of them as they stood up
for themselves.

The best story was that of Ganesh and how well he is explained in the
story. Anuj comes off as a prick and frankly thats how he seems.

The biggest blunder of the book is the last page where it is explained
that the woman telling the story was God herself. A bunch of BS if you
ask me. Consider this stuff, he says she tells him she will give the
adresses of the people involved and then he realizes a few mins later
that she is God and she dissappears(not in front of his eyes but he
gets knocked out). Well if you as me Chetan might have thought its a
good fun thing the end the book with but dude seriously wrong call
very bad call.

**END SPOILERS**

Finally If you like light books read this one its prefectly light and
relaxing. If you loved 5 point someone read this and dont expect it to
be as good and it will turn out better than u expect. The book is not
bad I probably did not enjoy it as much as most ppl would, give it a
try and drop your comments below.
Worth a read. Must say, One Night @ the Call Center is enlightening! For those like me, who has never
experienced the peculiar dynamics of working in a call centre. Comfortably, called ON@TCC, this one's all up for a
crisp weekend reading.
The story starts with Chetans chance meeting with a pretty girl while travelling in a train. The girl tells him a
story, on the condition that he would frame his next book around it. This is where Chetan, the author signs off
and in comes Shyam, a tame team leader working in a BPO in Gurgaon. Shyam narrates the tale of a night and
delineates the likes, dislikes, problems, aspirations, hurdles of his disgruntled team mates Vroom, Esha, Radhika,
Military Uncle and of course, Priyanka, with adequate empathy and spontaneous humour. Priyankas semi-
neurotic mother, Bakshis nonsensical antics, Vrooms obsession with bikes, pizzas and babes make for some
enjoyable reading. And of course, Shyams, (read Chetans) one-liners on women in general are fun

- 'Only women have this special area in the brain that keeps track of everything they and their friends wore the
last fifty times.

However, the punch of the story is a different one - its about the 'call from God' where God speaks to each of
them and Bhagat's philosophies are crystallized.

Chetan Bhagat proves himself to be a flawless storyteller yet again. Though the last few pages seem a little too
dramatic to be true (a call from God has to be taken with a pinch of salt), the style he adopts to narrate the
story is smart and seamless. You cant afford to miss the sweet flashback interludes of Shyam's courtship with
Priyanka. What is really impressive about the storytelling is the ease with which this IITian author makes
characters from completely different backgrounds seem so real in each others company, yet retain that distinct
streak of individuality.
This ones a winner. Go for it and let one call change your life.