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| Anuvab Pal at the launch at Oxford Bookstore. (Anindya Shankar Ray) |
Call centres, outsourcing and management were the topics of discussion at the recent launch of 1888 Dial India [Random House India, Rs 150] by Anuvab Pal at Oxford Bookstore, Park Street.
The book, which follows Pal’s eponymous play, revolves around Arun Gupta, an obnoxious, politically incorrect “polyester suit-wearing” Lothario who sees a business plan in America’s downturn. His mantra? If everything can be outsourced, then why not saving lives? He launches a suicide helpline for Americans but to cut costs, dispenses with accent training and hires two Americans — an out-of-work actor and a nun — for 36 hours to train his staff. Because “real American” will “teach American” better than trainers. But that’s not even most of it. The 36 hours include the 16-hour trans-Atlantic flight and some rest before the “real Americans” take classes!
So, how much of 1888 Dial India is based on the dime-a-dozen management-cum-self-help books available today, asked a member of the audience.
Quite a lot, it seems. “It’s hard to write satire here because the reality is so much more bizarre than its parody,” quipped Pal, who’s a writer, stand-up comedian and scriptwriter rolled into one.
Case in point? “A Punjabi gentleman in Delhi actually came up to me and said ‘good, sound management advice your book has!’,” laughed the author.
On the sidelines of the launch, Anuvab had a quick chat with t2.
So, what inspired this book?
First, John & Jane, an Ashim Ahluwalia documentary (2005) that follows six people working in a call centre. Also, I wanted to write a play that dealt with the combination of new India entrepreneurship and the idea that if a TCS ran a suicide hotline, how would it go. In John & Jane, there is this character, a Punjabi woman, who says ‘My name is Megan’. She’s dyed her hair blonde and says: ‘I want to marry a blonde person’. It’s like Anil Kapoor trying to speak BBC!
After writing the play, why the book?
Primarily because Arun Gupta (the protagonist) interested me. The brash Punjabi creator of business... if that man were to write a business book, what’d that be like, I wondered. I wanted to spend some time with him. What are his views on romance, on salary, on provident fund? He takes his employees clubbing. He has these views: people who go clubbing are like this and those who don’t should die. He holds similar views on vegetarian and non-veg food. I’m scared to think how much of him is inside me.
Aren’t you concerned that people might take your book a little too literally?
I would love that! I have an awkward sense of humour. Hopefully there are enough people out there who’ll find it funny. There was this lovely lady who reviewed this book. She also included the strange things her boss would tell her, like ‘never be naked in front of a client!’
Irony comes out of a counter- culture. Hopefully we’re trying to create something of a counter- culture. A lot of people in my parents’ generation would have no idea what we’re talking about. I think I want some people to say ‘but this is offensive!’
The President is Coming and 1888 Dial India were both written as plays first. Choice or co-incidence?
The publishers and agents tend to convince me that the paperback novel has a reading shelf life but the play doesn’t. Which is fine because my biggest problem is that I’m not a fan of the novel. You know, because novels are written by people who are goodlooking and have a tragic past and can hold forth with a British accent (laughs).
Any more books in the pipeline?
I have to get a film out next year. We’re close to finalising something on a romantic comedy I’ve been working on. But I do want to write a book on my time in Bollywood. All the meetings on scripts and scriptwriting are great fodder for a book. Once this guy showed me a poster of The Motorcycle Diaries and said ‘I want to make that with a jeep. And we’ll get some girls’. I said ‘but this is Che Guevara and his journey’. The man glared. ‘This is the problem with you writers. A book is a book and the journey is the journey. A lot of people make journeys but they don’t write a book on it. I came from Andheri but I’m not writing a book on it’!
I’ll write my book, I promise....
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