One Night at the Call Center by Chetan Bhagat

I must admit I haven’t read Five Point Someone, Bhagat’s debut novel when I picked up One Night at the Call Center during my recent visit to Lubbock. It was AR’s and he had left it at BR’s house where we stayed. One Night is about the life of three guys and three girls who work at a call center, their story told us over the course of, well, one night. Their company is called Connexions and they are the telephone representatives that resolve the home appliances’ worries of the Americans. The narrator is Shyam, the leader of the small group, a cynical and reluctant man. He shares with us what happens the whole night (they work US business hours). He has broken up with Priyanka, one of the three girls, and is trying to mend his heart. Meanwhile he, with Vroom, the hippest guy in the circle, is trying to get promoted by writing a helpful customer service web site manual. The other male in the group is Military Uncle. He is an old retired man, as the name suggests, who is estranged from his son’s family in America and to support himself takes this job. The others are the other girls: Esha, the aspiring model and Radhika, the devout daughter-in-law. Bakshi is their manager, a man with no real talent other than using the efforts of his subordinates. Shyam tells us the problems each member of his team has. He is still yet to get over Priyanka and revisits their time together whenever he can. Priyanka is someone you never understand. She bewilders and exasperates us. In his prologue, the author explains the reason behind the gestation of this book. One Night was born as a solution to the mild allegation that his first book did not represent totally the Indian youth. I still don’t think the book answered its purpose. Bhagat could have chosen not to reveal the reason claiming it to be just light-hearted material. His prose is simple and sometimes runs the risk of being ordinary. He has a qualifier though, that it is Shyam who is telling us the story. Bhagat has humor, folks. (“He was thirty, looked like he was forty, and talked like he was fifty”). There are laughs in scenes where the manager Bakshi makes his appearance. You also appreciate the sincerity of the story in general, though it is very predictable. It was easy, after a long time, to read something where you don’t have to work your imagination. His style is definitely no-brow. It seems he has written this with a film adaptation in mind. I think he would be a better screen writer than a novelist. The Indian youth in his book is obsessed about dates, is technology-conscious, is calorie-conscious (the women) and is of course, independent. There is America-bashing and the flippancy gives way to moralizing at points. An important character in the book appears to have no real work to do and sounds just like a management guru. There is not enough insight into the problems the characters go through. It would surprise me if anyone thought Shyam and Priyanka wouldn’t make up at the end. Bhagat should do more research is he is to talk about American accents and phrases (An American swearing “bloody”?). One Night is like a once-watchable movie. See it, Laugh out, End it. You definitely do not understand anything new about India Shining or India Inc. or whatever name one gives to twenty-first century India, especially its youth.
Bottomline: Bhagat’s book is pulpy Bollywood spice, no more. Don't expect logic or language.

Yaaradi Nee Mohini - Movie Review

YNM is the Indian Bruce Lee’s big release for this summer (In case you were wondering that’s how Dhanush is affectionately called by his 100 crore fans). Directed by his brother Selva in Telegu, his dutiful assistant Jawahar is credited for the Tamil version. It is Dhanush’s favorite role of a useless, good-for-nothing bloke, who can’t find a decent job, until a woman (or a motorbike) way over his league crosses his way, and he seems to revel in it. Nayantara plays Keerthi aka Neetu aka Komalavalli (just as appropriate as Rukumani was for Simran!), the girl way over his league.

Dhanush gallivants around town in search of a job that seems elusive until he sees his damsel. He does what any man, or at least any man whose brother is writing the script, would do – Chases the damsel down and finds a job in the same company. Obviously the ‘impress the princess’ phase follows. Dhanush is barely a few days into his job when Nayan, his manager, commits the blunder of putting a trainee on a project with a critical deliverable the following day. The project is a one of a kind project that requires 300 software engineers to work on DOS-based i286 machines to render the words ‘SYSTEM ACTIVATED’ on the screen. Our hero, seeing his damsel in distress, works through the night, writes 3000 lines of code in Visual C++, goes through several debugging cycles, and makes the magic words appear on the screen, leaving only one question in the mind of the audience – How could such a software genius have not found a job for 5 years?. Of course, Nayan is duly impressed. The hero then expresses his love in Australia, which the heroine readily rejects citing that she is due to get married the following month. She also insults his father, played by Raghuvaran, who dies the following day.

Dhanush’s friends, played by Karthik (of ‘Kandal Naal Mudhal’) and Karunas, suggest that he spend the month until Karthik’s marriage with Karthik’s family in the village. No points for guessing who Karthik is getting married to. Of course Karthik doesn’t know this until the final act. The director then shows his abject ignorance, extravagant generalization skills, and his fascination for butts and farts, to depict a prototype Iyengar family. The part of the screenplay leading up to the climax revolves around our hero impressing Karthik and Nayan’s family, and making Nayan realize his worth. I should say the climax was a fairly nice touch.

The movie works in parts. Dhanush fits the role and carries the movie efficiently on his thin frame. Nayan, while sometimes over the top, emotes rather well. Raghuvaran’s cameo as Dhanush’s father sure feels like an appropriate requiem for himself. The other caricatures and clowns fit the bill. The mostly lively screenplay masks the thin plot. On the downside, most of the songs are boring as is the background score. Someone needs to tell Yuvan that there is more to a background score than a Yamaha PSR 500. While the cliché’s on coincidences and license to assume a software company that give’s a month off may be excused, some cliché’s, like the man servant of the house asking the skin and bones hero how to build muscles like him, the hero replying in the negative to the heroine’s question on whether he would ever get married, and the ridiculous depiction of the heroine’s family, could have easily been avoided. With that said, Jawahar conjures up a fairly interesting movie with his master’s story and screenplay as a reference.

Bottomline: Worth a watch in spite of some cringe worthy scenes.

Dasavatharam - Music Review

With all the hype surrounding the film you would expect that Himesh would have put in a little more effort than his previous squibs in both Hindi and Tamil. But guess what, he has outdone himself by coming up with a soundtrack that sets the gold standard for third rate soundtracks. It seems like Kamal was saying "You know I am presenting this out-of-the-world idea, using state-of-the-art technology, shooting in some gorgeous locations, and the music has nothing to do with it". Next time Kamal decides to thrust such a blasphemy on us he should maybe try googling G.V. Prakash, Dharan or Niru. "Kaa Karupanukum" sounds like a glorified 70's disco track with crass, cheesy lyrics. "Kallai Mattum Kandal" is the only listenable song of this soundtrack, almost exclusively due to Hariharan's blistering vocals. "Mukundha Mukundha" has some wonderful words invoking Lord Krishna, pronounced and sung in a tone that is perfectly appropriate for a first night sequence (something like "Marugo Marugo" from Sathi Leelavathy). If you think Kamal and Mahalakshmi Iyer's version of "Oh Oh Sanam" is painful, wait till Himesh goes one better with the remix. "Ulaga Nayagan" ... let's just hope it's not part of the movie.

Bottomline: Don't waste 30 minutes listening to this soundtrack because Himesh spent less time composing it.