I Do Not Need to Hear more Call Center Stories

Ever read something that is funny, painful and true all at once?  It only needs to be a sentence.

Example:

"The more [Indians] embrace the logic of global capitalism, the more they must confront the notion that they are worth less."  - My Summer at an Indian Call Center, Mother Jones (This quote is out of context, so in the interest of not starting some kind of internet war, I should mention that the line above is not a normative statement but a factual observation on the part of the author)

It's easy to make fun of Indians for their beloved face-whitening creams and their paper-pale actresses, but where did these prejudices come from?  And more importantly, where are they coming from now?  Money talks.  In its own secret language.  But people talk too, and their language is usually pretty coherent.  (And if I had a dime for every white person who secretly felt superior to all nonwhite people - yes, liberals, I'm looking at you too - I'd never need to talk again.)  Let's stop pretending that globalisation is some Yellow Brick Road we're all joyfully traveling down together, singing and skipping and heading towards a common Oz where we shall receive, from a little green man, all that we desire.

When I first read this article, I thought it was irritating.  (Have you heard that one about the call center?  No?  You're probably dead.)  Then I thought the article was brilliant.  Now I'm back to thinking that it's irritating.

Let me explain something about good writing.  Good writing is very, very deceptive.  A really great writer can convince you, by verbal sleight-of-hand, of almost anything.  For example, that the weak argument he's dressing up in fancy pants and a patterned cravat - metaphorically speaking - is somehow sheer genius.  Let's not mistake cleverness for substance, eh?

So with that admonishment in mind, I reconsider "My Summer at an Indian Call Center" and realize that like a lot of memoirs about foreign countries by Americans (sorry, Liz Gilbert) it's really just a lot of bullshit.

Are the Indian call center workers really all that obsessed with being Americans?  What I am fascinated by is America's ability to look into just about any shiny surface and see itself looking back (to the exclusion of whatever else might be in there).  Maybe it's because we're bordered by two oceans, Canada and Mexico, but the older I get the more convinced I become that most Americans do not believe in the other six continents, just like they don't believe in Santa.  Remember, this is a country where a TV show about several young-ish spray-tanned people locked up in a house, drinking and fornicating constantly falls under the dim guise of "reality."

What really might have happened in Mother Jones' newsroom is that Andrew Marantz (to give him the benefit of the doubt) got to India and was like "Crap!  This is a whole country full of people!"

To which his editors, like lost lambs in search of a shepherd, kept bleating, "Call center?  Call center?"  Because one of them recently called up Hewlett Packard tech support and got a girl whom he could swear was from Bombay - Mumbai? - or was it Bangalore?  Or Togo?  He doesn't quite remember, but isn't there someone in India who's fixing Americans' phones and knows how to speak American?  Anyone?  Anyone at all??

To which Marantz replied, "I guess."  And turned in this sad lump of prose.

To give him less benefit of the doubt.  Marantz arrived in India and was immediately nearly squelched by monsoon rains and furious taxi drivers.  Determined to tough it out, his fluorescent dermis nonetheless gave him away, and he was soon sighted and adopted into the clannish ranks of expats.  He spent his summer getting high, trying to score with disinterested French chicks, and complaining about his driver and his maid.  (Let's be frank - this is how a lot of Indians spend their time, too.  But somehow "My summer getting high, trying to score with disinterested French chicks and complaining about the help" isn't really Mother Jones' editorial voice)

Key line from his story that supports this second argument.  "If I had been Indian, I would have fit right in [at the call center]."  Really?  I have my doubts.  But maybe it's easy to criticize Marantz because he bothered.  He tried.  He made an effort.  That's more than a lot of people do.

Not that I should even care what appears in an American magazine, since nobody reads them anymore.   

The famed Chetan Bhagat wrote a book about call centers called "One Night at the Call Center."  I think this just about illustrates my point perfectly.  An American spent 2 months at a call center and came away with a 5 page article.  Bhagat was there for a night and managed to cobble together an entire novel.  If Marantz' subject had been class discord in modern India, "White Tiger" would have been a pamphlet.