One Night at the Call Center Read online

  “So what did you have to do to get this job? Fucking degree in nuclear physics?”

  “Sir, do you need help with your cleaner or not?”

  “C'mon son, answer me. I don't need your help. Yeah, I'll change the dust bag. What about you guys? When will you change your dusty country?”

  “Excuse me, sir, but I want you to stop talking like that,” Vroom said.

  “Oh really, now some brown kid's telling me what to do—” William Fox's voice stopped abruptly as I cut off the call.

  Vroom didn't move for a few seconds. His whole body trembled and he was breathing heavily, then he placed his elbows on the table and covered his face with his hands.

  “You don't have to talk to those people. You know that,” I said to Vroom.

  The girls glanced at us while they were still on their calls.

  “Vroom, I'm talking to you,” I said.

  He raised his face and slowly turned to look at me. Then he banged his fist on the table. “Damn!” he screamed and kicked hard under the table.

  “What the …” Priyanka said. “My call just got cut off.”

  Vroom's kick had dislodged the power wires, disconnecting all our calls. I wanted to check the wires, but had to check on Vroom first. Vroom stood up and his six-foot-plus frame towered above us.

  “Guys, there are two things I cannot stand,” he said and showed us two fingers. “Racists. And Americans.”

  Priyanka started laughing.

  “What is there to laugh at?” I said.

  “Because there is a contradiction. He doesn't like racists, but can't stand Americans,” Priyanka said.

  “Why?” Vroom said, ignoring Priyanka. “Why do some fat-ass, dim-witted Americans get to act superior to us? Do you know why?”

  Nobody answered.

  Vroom continued, “I'll tell you why. Not because they are smarter. Not because they are better people. But because their country is rich and ours is poor. That is the only damn reason. Because the losers who have run our country for the last fifty years couldn't do better than make India one of the poorest countries on earth.”

  “Stop overreacting, Vroom. Some stupid guy calls and—” Radhika said.

  “Screw Americans,” I said and gave him a bottle of water. “Look, you've broken down the entire system.” I pointed to the blank call screens.

  “Someone kicked the Americans a bit too hard. No more calls for now,” Priyanka said, rolling her eyes.

  “Let me take a look,” I said and went under the table. I was more worried about the wires tapping the emergency phone. However, they were intact.

  “Shyam, wait,” Esha said, “we have a great excuse for not taking calls. Leave it like it is for a while.”

  Everyone agreed with her. We decided to call systems after twenty minutes.

  “Why was Bakshi here? I saw him come out of the men's toilet,” Priyanka said.

  “To drop off a courier delivery for Esha,” I said. “And he said there's a team meeting at 2:30 a.m. Oh man, I still have to photocopy the board meeting invite.”

  I assembled Bakshi's sheets again.

  “What delivery,” Esha said. “This?”

  She lifted a brown packet that was lying near her computer.

  “Must be,” Vroom said, “though what courier firm delivers stuff at this time of night?”

  Esha opened the packet and took out two bundles of hundred-rupee notes. One bundle had a small yellow Post-it note on it. She read the Post-it and her face went pale.

  “Wow, someone's rich,” Vroom said.

  “Not bad. What's the money for?” Radhika said.

  “It's nothing. Just a friend returning money she borrowed from me,” Esha said.

  She dumped the packet in her drawer and took out her mobile phone. Her face was pensive, as if she was debating whether or not to make a call. I collected my sheets to go to the photocopying room.

  “Want to help me?” I called out to Vroom.

  “No thanks. People I used to work with are becoming national TV reporters, but look at me. I'm taking calls from losers and being asked to help with loser jobs,” Vroom said and looked away.

  Chapter 15

  1:30 a.m.

  I SWITCHED ON THE PHOTOCOPIER in the supplies room and put Bakshi's stack in the document feeder. I'd just pressed the “start” button on the agenda document when the copier creaked and groaned to a halt. “Paper lam: Tray 2” appeared in big, bold letters on the screen.

  The copier in our supplies room is not a machine, it's a person. A person with a psychotic soul and a grumpy attitude. Whenever you copy more than two sheets, there's a paper jam. After that, the machine teases you: it gives you systematic instructions on how to unjam it— open cover, remove tray, pull lever—but if it knows so much, why doesn't it fix itself?

  “Damn,” I mumbled to myself as I bent down to open the paper trays. I turned a few levers and pulled out whatever paper was in sight.

  I stood up, rearranged the documents on the feeder tray and pressed “start” again, not realizing that my ID was resting on Bakshi's original document. As the machine restarted it sucked in my ID along with the paper. The ID pulled at the strap, which tightened around my neck.

  “Aargh,” I said as I choked. The ID went inside the machine's guts, and the strap curled tighter around my neck. I screamed loudly and pulled at my ID, but the machine was stronger. I was sure it wanted to kill me and was probably making a copy of my ID for my obituary while it was at it. I started kicking the machine hard.

  Vroom came running into the room. “What the …” He appeared nonplussed. He saw A4 sheets spread all over the room, a groaning photocopier and me lying down on top of it, desperately tugging at my ID strap.

  “Do something,” I said in a muffled voice.

  “Like what?” he said and bent over to look at the machine. The screen was flashing the poetic words “Paper Jam” while my ID strap ran right into the machine.

  Vroom looked around the supplies room and found a pair of scissors.

  “Should I?” he said and smiled at me. “I really want the others to see this.”

  “Shut… up … and … cut,” I said.

  Snap! In one snap my breath came back.

  “OK now?” Vroom asked as he threw the scissors back in the supplies tray.

  I nodded as I rubbed my neck and took wheezing breaths. I rested my head on the warm, soothing glass of the photocopier, but I must have rested it too hard, or maybe my head is too heavy, because I heard a crack.

  “Fuck,” Vroom said, “you broke the glass.”

  “What?” I said as I lifted my head.

  “Get off,” Vroom said and pulled me off the machine. “What is it with you, man? Having a bad office supplies day?”

  “Who knows?” I said, collecting Bakshi's document. “I really am good for nothing. I can't even do these loser jobs. I almost died. Can you imagine the headline: COPIER

  DECAPITATES MAN, AND DUPLICATES DOCUMENT.”

  Vroom laughed and put his arm around my shoulder.

  “Chill out, man. I apologize.”

  “For what?” I said. Nobody has ever apologized to me in the past twenty-six years of my life.

  “I'm sorry I was rude and didn't come and help you. First there are these rumors about the call center closing down, then my old workmate Boontoo makes it to NDTV and Bakshi sends the document without copying us in. Meanwhile, some psycho caller screams curses at me. It just gets to you sometimes.”

  “What gets to you?” I asked. I was trying to copy Bakshi's document again, but the photocopier was hurling abusive messages at the screen every time I pressed a button. Soon it self-detected a crack in the glass and switched itself off altogether. I think it had committed suicide.

  “Life,” Vroom said, sitting down on one of the stools in the supplies room, “life gets to you. You think you're perfectly happy—you know, good salary, nice friends, life's a party—but all of a sudden, in one tiny snap, everything can crack