For Shyam Mehra (Sam Marcy), team boss of the Western Appliances Strategic Group night shift, working at a call centre is a safe job to tide him over while he decides what he really wants to do with his life. Connections isn't one of those new-age, well-appointed call centres that treat its staff as valuable, and their boss, Subhash Bakshi, is a management-jargon-obsessed idiot. Plus everyone has to go by Anglicised names acceptable to American ears. But he's comfortable there and enjoys spending time with the colleagues who are now his friends - Esha Singh (Eliza Singer), Radhika Jha (Regina Jones), Varun 'Vroom' Malhotra (Victor Mell) and Military Uncle (the only older member of the team). Everyone has their problems - Esha wants to be a model but isn't tall enough; Radhika hates being subservient to her mother-in-law and suspects her marriage was a mistake; Vroom wants to be an instrument of change for India but needs his job to pay for his addiction to pizza; Military Uncle is estranged from his son, daughter-in-law and grandson; and Shyam is still in love with his ex-girlfriend and colleague Priyanka.
Priyanka's announcement that she's engaged to Ganesh Gupta, a Microsoft exec in the US (an arranged engagement brokered by their parents), triggers Shyam to reassess his life and initiates a cascade of changes that affects all the WASG team, and the rest of the call centre.
A synopsis doesn't really do justice to this unique and highly involving novel. Superficially a romance, and in adaptation for the soon-to-be-released Bollywood film Hello, One Night is also a call for action, a condemnation of the path Indian politicians have taken, a plea that the place of India be reevaluated, and an inspiration that its youth demand change. The author also attempts to have the reader evaluate her life, by requesting she answer three questions before beginning the novel, and asking her to reflect on these at the end.
This makes it sound as though One Night is sombre and heavy, but the text is readable, engaging and well paced. The characters are developed and unique, with very real problems that are resolved in a realistic, believable way - that is, as long as you are comfortable with the deus ex machina moments where God appears to inspire change. There are also some interesting insights sprikled through out the text - like the observation that "only women think there is a reason to thank people when someone listens to them."
A love of India, and a strong sense of the country, permeate the text, alongside an evaluation of America that I suspect would take most Americans by surprise - an evaluation I imagine is shared by Indian call centre workers who handle Australian enquiries. All in all a thought provoking, absorbing, welcome book that makes me interested in reading the other works of fledgling novelist Bhagat. - Alex
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