Facts:
Author - Chetan Bhagat
Book - One Night @ the Call Center
Price - 95/-
Publisher - Rupa & co.
Other works - Five Point Someone.
Recently I took membership of a library and the book I picked up first from there was this book. I think it’s quite late to review this book but after reading; I couldn’t restrain my feelings to vent out. It is the second writing venture by Chetan Bhagat after his much talked-about debut novel “Five point someone”. This book is about six people working in a call center called “Connexions” in Gurgaon. The key characters of the book are Shyam, Varun, Esha, Priyanka, Radhika and a Military Uncle. Apart from these six people, Bakshi and Shefali are two more characters with special appearances. But, in the book Bakshi didn’t seem to be a special character as he captures more space than Military Uncle, so the definition of key characters could then be changed. The USP of the book is the lucid way of narrating the story. Characters of the book seem realistic and are easily identifiable. One-liners; especially said by Shyam Mehra for himself, were rally humorous. However, positives are in scarce as compared to negatives. I think the one-liner “It was the night, there was a phone call from God”, which was used for publicity of this book proved detrimental to its health. Reader’s curiosity aroused by the one-liner turns into irritation when it took so long to reach the page 241 for phone call scene and tried the patience of readers. Intermittent flashbacks by Shyam as “Past dates with Priyanka” added more to the boredom of readers. Moreover, the novel appears to be a bollywood Masala Movie like “Metro” where a bunch of interrelated guys are confusing each others lives. Changes in story tracks were dreadfully sharp, like mellowed feelings of Priyanka after knowing the baldness fact about his beau, or in the end when pretty lady denies of her identity as Radhika, Priyanka or Esha, sudden assumption of that lady as GOD by the author was beyond any stretch of imagination. That was the kind of “Over special-effect”. The treatment of climax had totally gone over the head. The irony was, after getting so called “call from the God” or the inner-call, guys did all offensive things to righttrack the call center. Hitting the boss was one of the garbage ideas generated by Author. The plan to increase the influx of calls was complete stupid. Vroom was just an agent like other hundreds of thousand agents working in Connexions, but they all followed Vroom’s plan word by word like a child after hearing his announcement on public announcement system. As far as “Mission Yankee” is concerned, the WCA had an array of products and by making only computer customers scared, success of the plan is doubtful. Even the sudden increase in no. of calls categorically for computer customers would make it an issue of management attention. It seems Author didn’t apply his management Gyan while weaving the story. After getting the call from God, Shyam Mehra, the hero of the story, regained his lost confidence but took no lead leaving all space for Vroom to save the call center. Since inception to end, the character of Shyam depicted as a looser and the only thing changed at the end was his thinking that “There is no such thing as a loser after all”.
On the whole, I think author needs to write one more book soon; called “Past mistakes with two books”, which would further help him honing his writing skills.
Author - Chetan Bhagat
Book - One Night @ the Call Center
Price - 95/-
Publisher - Rupa & co.
Other works - Five Point Someone.
Recently I took membership of a library and the book I picked up first from there was this book. I think it’s quite late to review this book but after reading; I couldn’t restrain my feelings to vent out. It is the second writing venture by Chetan Bhagat after his much talked-about debut novel “Five point someone”. This book is about six people working in a call center called “Connexions” in Gurgaon. The key characters of the book are Shyam, Varun, Esha, Priyanka, Radhika and a Military Uncle. Apart from these six people, Bakshi and Shefali are two more characters with special appearances. But, in the book Bakshi didn’t seem to be a special character as he captures more space than Military Uncle, so the definition of key characters could then be changed. The USP of the book is the lucid way of narrating the story. Characters of the book seem realistic and are easily identifiable. One-liners; especially said by Shyam Mehra for himself, were rally humorous. However, positives are in scarce as compared to negatives. I think the one-liner “It was the night, there was a phone call from God”, which was used for publicity of this book proved detrimental to its health. Reader’s curiosity aroused by the one-liner turns into irritation when it took so long to reach the page 241 for phone call scene and tried the patience of readers. Intermittent flashbacks by Shyam as “Past dates with Priyanka” added more to the boredom of readers. Moreover, the novel appears to be a bollywood Masala Movie like “Metro” where a bunch of interrelated guys are confusing each others lives. Changes in story tracks were dreadfully sharp, like mellowed feelings of Priyanka after knowing the baldness fact about his beau, or in the end when pretty lady denies of her identity as Radhika, Priyanka or Esha, sudden assumption of that lady as GOD by the author was beyond any stretch of imagination. That was the kind of “Over special-effect”. The treatment of climax had totally gone over the head. The irony was, after getting so called “call from the God” or the inner-call, guys did all offensive things to righttrack the call center. Hitting the boss was one of the garbage ideas generated by Author. The plan to increase the influx of calls was complete stupid. Vroom was just an agent like other hundreds of thousand agents working in Connexions, but they all followed Vroom’s plan word by word like a child after hearing his announcement on public announcement system. As far as “Mission Yankee” is concerned, the WCA had an array of products and by making only computer customers scared, success of the plan is doubtful. Even the sudden increase in no. of calls categorically for computer customers would make it an issue of management attention. It seems Author didn’t apply his management Gyan while weaving the story. After getting the call from God, Shyam Mehra, the hero of the story, regained his lost confidence but took no lead leaving all space for Vroom to save the call center. Since inception to end, the character of Shyam depicted as a looser and the only thing changed at the end was his thinking that “There is no such thing as a loser after all”.
On the whole, I think author needs to write one more book soon; called “Past mistakes with two books”, which would further help him honing his writing skills.
No comments:
Post a Comment