Oh when a book triggers memories.....

"My one particular ex-boss.My life when i worked for him was living hell and was probably the worst phase of my life.I used to wonder why this was happening to me.Now i know without that experience i could not have done this book.Thank you mr ex-bos for making me suffer"
even before i could read the book i was kind of rolling in laughter and enjoying it ..yes i knew one day i am going to use these exact lines somewhere if i ever write any kinda book.
Yeah Mr Chetan Bhagat has created a wonderful Mr Bakshi in One Night at The Call Center and while many people may think this is just a case of excessiveness in Fiction it is not so..for if Mr Bakshi ever competed with my Ex Boss he would come out in Flying Colors.He was not a manager in my view anyway, with his Horrendous insecurity, Self Centeredness and pathetic acting ability which he continually used to show his sincerity when it was absolutely visible he was his immediate boss’s stooge a perfect YES Boss kind .In fact that was his Punchline “Yes Boss.”

But yeah like Mr Bhagat i too owe him..all my team mates do...the fun we had the friendships we made were partly because of the adversity because of him.
Truly it is in adversity that you make the best friends.

I though owe him a little more.Before working under him i never knew someone could be so scared of me, that i had such a power to influence people.
He had a kind of phobia with me that i was trouble for him and hence created trouble for me.....which well took too long for him to work out and fine tune and by the time it did he himself landed flat on his face....i was out for good by then.

In fact he had the verve to tell a new recruit in our team who was quite friendly with me to keep off certain negative people..but then again as ever he misjudged the person he said that too...not one to back down he got a stern lashing from the girl...”it is you who are being negative by such talk” was what she flung in his face.

He certainly made life hell for quite a whole bunch of us....... but fortunately we were a bunch of quite spirited people and since it was never a career we rebelled and life had its worst and best moments there.I too wondered why me...why have i to be here..... but yeah after that experience i learnt a lot about how not to handle people.I wish i had started my blog then instead of being lazy...it was a more interesting phase of life even though it was horrible...you had something or some one to fight.
Whenever we chat up ...us old friends we can never end a conversation without referrring to him...he was such a focal point then and among us unconsciously he is i guess. He ensured that everyone in the team hated him...only difference was some were brave enough to be open and some too tepid to say it out.
I remember how he sulked to his friend why the heck does my team have the maximum no of engineers and not just normal graduates.
He had once asked me define creativity...i was hardly in any mood to talk to him leave alone define ...i just said its something new ....he explained it to me...it means the “same things done in a different new way”....wow i thought ...how well he learnt the definition by heart.(That was the day i decided for sure i was resigning (though that was the aim since the day i joined but that was different) asap ---- enough money or not for job search......learning creativity from him...God save me)
That guy had some crack...even when i gave him my resignation letter he asked me to sit and was trying to explain what was not fine(it was a near copy of the exact letter i wrote most part of for my friend and he had no problems with when he signed it for my friend) in it...It was way too much and i remember the last line i spoke to him
“ What difference does it make now. Get to the Point” and he said ok and dissapeared into HR and that was last i saw his sordid face.

Nevertheless getting back to the book it shows what is the difference between a story teller and a writer. My friend asked which was better “Five Point Someone” or “One Night at The call Center” and while i tried to explain stuff about how Five Point was racy and hilarious but the end choice for me was “One Night...” because i felt it explore human nature , emotions and was more realistic even with the most unrealistic unending (perfect filmi) than Five Point which was very well written esp by someone who’s not an author...lots of great humor.May be i also liked it because i could imagine it better than people who have never been in a BPO...though again here i think its too unrealistic because in real time there is no chance of having that much time as is portrayed in the story(he conveniently puts them in section for special calls and bypasses the issue).

I neither think he gave a very true acccount neither was he way off the mark. It was good but it left so much more out you feel.How well a good writer could have written you feel.But Neverthless he’s the one who dared to tell the story and great credit for that unlike writers who still write ancient stories which are hard to relate.The book’s good and a damn easy read even the slowest readers should finish it in 5 hrs maximum.
The book though had me laughing....so much....it served as a reminder to many many jokes that are a part of life there.
That Microsoft word funda in it seems so stupid to us but i can bet that 70% of the Americans will fall for it.
And there a line in it where the character Shyam says something like “yeah Americans are clever say like 1 in 10 is brilliant and the rest of them call us here at night”....How many time i ve said it heard it its unbeleivable.

I also started off on Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City sometime ago and just 50 pages in that voluminous book and you feel What a writer is. Taking a simple situation and putting such life into it.
Here the describes his feeling when he came back to Bombay which he left when in school and now has come back with his family from New York with happy nostalgia for his city but finds the hardships of life and frustration.
“This fucking city.The sea should rush in over these islands in one great tidal wave and obliterate it, cover it under water.It should be bomber from the air.
Every morning i get angry.It is the only way to get anything done;people here respond to anger, are afraid of it. In the absence of money or connections, anger will do.I begin to understand the uses of anger as theatre – with taxi drivers, doormen , plumbers, government bureaucrats. Even my CD player in India responds to anger , physical violence; when a gentle press of PLAY buton fails to arouse it from slumber, a hard smack across the side propels it into sound.”

That CD player thing had me ...i mean how many times i ve smacked my television and got it straight only i know. i especially related so much to that frustration and anger feeling.
Its a fortnight since i started the book and have had no time to continue it sadly.