Chapter 3
“You take great calls!”
Monday, January 4, 2010
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Chapter 2 - My name is Paasha
Chapter 2
My name is Paasha
The next day I came to office a bit later as the car that came to pick me up for work took an exceptionally long route through fields and cities and towns and eventually it managed to get us to office. I used to then live in a neighborhood called Karolbagh which was around the central business district of New Delhi more famously known as CP or Connaught Place. Now Karolbagh was a notorious place for shopping and some great bargains every other day. But I hated crowded places so I very seldom visited it. There’s a road here known as Ajmal Khan road and is believed to be a part of the larger shopping area which dates back to the 10th or the 11th century when the Mughals were here and was then too the shopping place for the citizens of the state of Delhi, so you’ll find a heady mix of modern and traditional shopping fares and throngs of people everyday seem to be shopping. Where do they come from, how much do they shop and where do they take them all is quite a mystery. You’ll find thousands and thousands of people everyday shopping and by evening you wouldn’t have space to even park your foot but people seem to be moving and shopping. Amazing!
Anyway; the ride took us close to 3 hours to get there and by the time we reached office we were tired, nauseated and ready to head back home if we’d got a chance. We traveled some 80 – 90 kilometers (about 50 – 55 in miles) to get to office and that distance seemed forever. The reason for this detour was for the fact that they were building a new highway on the National Highway 8 or more commonly known as NH8 in preparation for the commonwealth games and in accordance with the master plan set out for the ever growing city put forward for 2021 by the government of Delhi. The idea was initiated to connect the 4 major metropolitans with a multi-lane highway so that it makes commuting between them easy. Now since they didn’t have another built we had to use the same one they were building and you’d have traffic snarls everyday because they were doing it on a BOT or Build Operate and Transfer model. Anyway, with that underway our life was put into hell right from the day they started building that highway. I was lucky as I’d travel god knows where to get to office everyday and everyday seemed like a new route I was taking. Sometimes I complained but most of the times I just enjoyed the ride either sleeping or interested in the new route.
I got out of the car and pulled myself up to get upstairs and start another day of pushing those filthy promotions to whiteys who would not buzz and were neither kind to even take something even if they didn’t need it – now that was wishful thinking. I was lucky here for I never had to wish so much that they’d take it as I had my skills and language in place for I was one of them that whiteys left behind when they repatriated when India negotiated independence from the British in 1947. My kind of people are know as Anglo Indians or anglicized Indians or more offensively known among the then British domiciled population in India as WOGs (Westernized Oriental Gentleman). It was a term coined to originally style people who developed British cultural influences but later with time as these WOGs got into trouble with the law of land legally or illegally they weren’t much liked by the very people who molded them. Anyway, what once looked like a bad hangover of cultural disorientation now seemed to work in good stead for me.
I come from a place in India known as Bihar and I tell you it isn’t anything like the wild Wild West people know about. It’s twice worse and you could easily coin a term for it as the wild wild east. Lawlessness is a way of life here, and underdevelopment is the key performance indicator of this place. Poverty as its lowest best and illiteracy even lower to keep up with its cult status of being the worst place in India and by the state of things could well be the worst place on earth. But me and my folks we love it and call it home. I don’t feel safe anywhere and don’t feel more warm anywhere than when I am back home in the wild wild east. There is something about this place that drew my forefathers here and when the all the British were leaving they just gave in their British passports and stayed right where they’d stayed for the last 100 years or so from the day they first put foot on the land of Bihar. We all spoke English and we all observed very English traditions and customs. My mother was the only domiciled English woman who married outside the community to a Roman Catholic Bihari Gentleman who was himself a product of two communities brought together by the mercy of the church.
We had in total close to a 200 folks (the count from about when I started getting to know things) from about 15 families and they were all dispersed within 100 square kilometers. We mostly had people from Scotland and Ireland and few from England; most of them came to India to do business and were coaxed into a better life than the terrible one they were living there as they weren’t educated and were promised land and wealth. Well they got both and they also got a wonderful life. They liked it so much that most didn’t go back. My grandparents and their folks were primarily Scottish but got mixed with the Irish and the English along the way as there’d be few to choose to get married to and had to settle for what was there apart from a few who went back to England and Scotland and convinced the beautiful ladies there on India.
So with such a legacy and heritage it would have been difficult not to score on those cross sale items and if I couldn’t do it; it would further have been a shameful thing to have grown in the language and style and not being able to make them whiteys look like donkeys would have been a failure on my part and something that I wouldn’t have been able to digest. Garland and Josh too was my people and were from Shillong (a region in Megahalaya) and Ranchi (now the capital of a separate state known as Jharkhand but which was previously a part of the larger state of Bihar) respectively. Not that we hated them whiteys and duped them with the promotions we sold them everyday but just that we had to do it and we had to do it for many reasons.
Well we were now into our calling day and as usual we three folks got settled into our chairs and fixed the calling gear on and got started with our ritual. They were like thunder storm that day; it just kept coming and coming and we had no clue if it’d ever stop. God I tell you; we would have collapsed if we’d not sneaked out for a couple of minutes to grab a couple of energy bars. What a relief after those bars. We got our strength back and started pushing those calls again. Garland and Josh got some sales in all that confusion and actually raked up quite a bit. I was trying hard for I didn’t expect a bad day out of so many calls. Well, as I was getting tired of them whiteys I managed to sneak a couple of high value cross sales back to back and that got my day wagging again.
The calls finally relented and we got a chance to breathe and as I turned there she was right in front of me again waiting with her buddy jack to hook up with my phone set so that she could listen into my calls.
“Hi, my name is Paasha.”
Wow I thought to myself; that is such a wonderful name. Paasha! I must said it many times over mentally till I recollected from my daze and I said –
“Hello, my name is David, can I help you?”
And she said I certainly should; for she was waiting for me to take a breather so that I could allow her to buddy with me to listen into calls.
Wow – that was wonderful and my day was made and complete. I had the bomb of the floor close to my skin; I could almost feel her breathe into me!
My name is Paasha
The next day I came to office a bit later as the car that came to pick me up for work took an exceptionally long route through fields and cities and towns and eventually it managed to get us to office. I used to then live in a neighborhood called Karolbagh which was around the central business district of New Delhi more famously known as CP or Connaught Place. Now Karolbagh was a notorious place for shopping and some great bargains every other day. But I hated crowded places so I very seldom visited it. There’s a road here known as Ajmal Khan road and is believed to be a part of the larger shopping area which dates back to the 10th or the 11th century when the Mughals were here and was then too the shopping place for the citizens of the state of Delhi, so you’ll find a heady mix of modern and traditional shopping fares and throngs of people everyday seem to be shopping. Where do they come from, how much do they shop and where do they take them all is quite a mystery. You’ll find thousands and thousands of people everyday shopping and by evening you wouldn’t have space to even park your foot but people seem to be moving and shopping. Amazing!
Anyway; the ride took us close to 3 hours to get there and by the time we reached office we were tired, nauseated and ready to head back home if we’d got a chance. We traveled some 80 – 90 kilometers (about 50 – 55 in miles) to get to office and that distance seemed forever. The reason for this detour was for the fact that they were building a new highway on the National Highway 8 or more commonly known as NH8 in preparation for the commonwealth games and in accordance with the master plan set out for the ever growing city put forward for 2021 by the government of Delhi. The idea was initiated to connect the 4 major metropolitans with a multi-lane highway so that it makes commuting between them easy. Now since they didn’t have another built we had to use the same one they were building and you’d have traffic snarls everyday because they were doing it on a BOT or Build Operate and Transfer model. Anyway, with that underway our life was put into hell right from the day they started building that highway. I was lucky as I’d travel god knows where to get to office everyday and everyday seemed like a new route I was taking. Sometimes I complained but most of the times I just enjoyed the ride either sleeping or interested in the new route.
I got out of the car and pulled myself up to get upstairs and start another day of pushing those filthy promotions to whiteys who would not buzz and were neither kind to even take something even if they didn’t need it – now that was wishful thinking. I was lucky here for I never had to wish so much that they’d take it as I had my skills and language in place for I was one of them that whiteys left behind when they repatriated when India negotiated independence from the British in 1947. My kind of people are know as Anglo Indians or anglicized Indians or more offensively known among the then British domiciled population in India as WOGs (Westernized Oriental Gentleman). It was a term coined to originally style people who developed British cultural influences but later with time as these WOGs got into trouble with the law of land legally or illegally they weren’t much liked by the very people who molded them. Anyway, what once looked like a bad hangover of cultural disorientation now seemed to work in good stead for me.
I come from a place in India known as Bihar and I tell you it isn’t anything like the wild Wild West people know about. It’s twice worse and you could easily coin a term for it as the wild wild east. Lawlessness is a way of life here, and underdevelopment is the key performance indicator of this place. Poverty as its lowest best and illiteracy even lower to keep up with its cult status of being the worst place in India and by the state of things could well be the worst place on earth. But me and my folks we love it and call it home. I don’t feel safe anywhere and don’t feel more warm anywhere than when I am back home in the wild wild east. There is something about this place that drew my forefathers here and when the all the British were leaving they just gave in their British passports and stayed right where they’d stayed for the last 100 years or so from the day they first put foot on the land of Bihar. We all spoke English and we all observed very English traditions and customs. My mother was the only domiciled English woman who married outside the community to a Roman Catholic Bihari Gentleman who was himself a product of two communities brought together by the mercy of the church.
We had in total close to a 200 folks (the count from about when I started getting to know things) from about 15 families and they were all dispersed within 100 square kilometers. We mostly had people from Scotland and Ireland and few from England; most of them came to India to do business and were coaxed into a better life than the terrible one they were living there as they weren’t educated and were promised land and wealth. Well they got both and they also got a wonderful life. They liked it so much that most didn’t go back. My grandparents and their folks were primarily Scottish but got mixed with the Irish and the English along the way as there’d be few to choose to get married to and had to settle for what was there apart from a few who went back to England and Scotland and convinced the beautiful ladies there on India.
So with such a legacy and heritage it would have been difficult not to score on those cross sale items and if I couldn’t do it; it would further have been a shameful thing to have grown in the language and style and not being able to make them whiteys look like donkeys would have been a failure on my part and something that I wouldn’t have been able to digest. Garland and Josh too was my people and were from Shillong (a region in Megahalaya) and Ranchi (now the capital of a separate state known as Jharkhand but which was previously a part of the larger state of Bihar) respectively. Not that we hated them whiteys and duped them with the promotions we sold them everyday but just that we had to do it and we had to do it for many reasons.
Well we were now into our calling day and as usual we three folks got settled into our chairs and fixed the calling gear on and got started with our ritual. They were like thunder storm that day; it just kept coming and coming and we had no clue if it’d ever stop. God I tell you; we would have collapsed if we’d not sneaked out for a couple of minutes to grab a couple of energy bars. What a relief after those bars. We got our strength back and started pushing those calls again. Garland and Josh got some sales in all that confusion and actually raked up quite a bit. I was trying hard for I didn’t expect a bad day out of so many calls. Well, as I was getting tired of them whiteys I managed to sneak a couple of high value cross sales back to back and that got my day wagging again.
The calls finally relented and we got a chance to breathe and as I turned there she was right in front of me again waiting with her buddy jack to hook up with my phone set so that she could listen into my calls.
“Hi, my name is Paasha.”
Wow I thought to myself; that is such a wonderful name. Paasha! I must said it many times over mentally till I recollected from my daze and I said –
“Hello, my name is David, can I help you?”
And she said I certainly should; for she was waiting for me to take a breather so that I could allow her to buddy with me to listen into calls.
Wow – that was wonderful and my day was made and complete. I had the bomb of the floor close to my skin; I could almost feel her breathe into me!
Monday, December 7, 2009
Chapter 1 - You’re the angel in disguise!
May 2003
You’re the angel in disguise!
It was a sunny day; well actually really hot as it was about mid summer and the month of May. We all hurriedly got to our workstations to start a new day of what we’d say ‘calling’. I took my gear from the floor supervisor and went to my seat which was one among three at the extreme end of the floor overlooking the garden below in the front. Our floor was on the first and from where I sat; I had a clear view of the road below and the beautifully manicured garden which we were not allowed to walk on nor sit on. It’s a funny thing to have grassy green lawns on which you can’t sit or lie down and enjoy God’s wonders.
I put my gear on and settled myself in my chair and pinned the cross sale item sheet for the day on the soft board on the work station partitions; we had to try and pitch and sell these promotional items to customers. It sure had a menu of terrible options but nonetheless it all did for selling. Garland a friend of mine sat facing me and Josh sat behind me with his back towards me. So, I mostly spoke with Garland and sometimes turned my back when I’d get a breather between those incessant calls to chat up with Josh. The heat was coming on outside and the rays were penetrating through the thick glass windows almost making it feel like you were enclosed in a glass bottle with the heat turned on. Garland didn’t like the outdoors much so he more often than not would have the blinds out but on such hot sunny days you might as well dislike it outside for the cruel heat could fry an egg on a man’s bald head.
We drew the blinds and organized a little comfort pretty fast and just about when we could settle in for a little chit chat before the incessant calls started barging our ears with the account name and codes we thought we’d might be able to sneak out some time to catch up on our favorite topic doing the rounds. Now none of us were really the kind to think much of things we just did what we came across and never complained because there wasn’t time for it and when there was we’d just spend it on something’s more valuable. The important thing on our minds was this beautiful girl who had joined the organization a few days back. We were not the only ones preoccupied with this spice but the entire floor. I mean; you could literally over hear conversations across the floor on just one topic. ‘The girl who joined us recently…’.
I’ll tell you what was on my mind. When I saw her for the first time pass my bay and go towards the washroom – I could have been dead cold and frozen for that moment for she wasn’t anything that I’d seeing in my entire life. It was so frightening to see something almost so perfect that it blows your mind and you just give a stare like you’ve caught your eye staring into a lion right in front of you. It almost seems like a deathly moment. You’re so scared your system stops working; frightened so much that you couldn’t haven even peed to let it out.
How could something be so enigmatically perfect that it is frightening?
And as luck would have it; after a barrage of calls that kept pounding our ears for half an hour the IPLC went down and we got to know of it a few minutes after. We were told that the expected time for a resolution was indefinite for some fiber optic cable somewhere in the ocean snapped. Well whatever that is.
I took my gear (headset) off and rested in my chair. Garland did the same and so did Josh. I pushed my seat back as I was in the middle and Josh turned around so that we could now face each other and chit chat in a more comfortable fashion.
Garland had something on his mind and I knew what it was –
“Hey Dave, did you hear about that new girl who’s joined us”
“Yeah I did, what about it”
“Nothing really, just that everybody’s talking about her”
“And so are we” I said.
We continued chatting for the next hour or so and I’ll tell you we’d never spoken about anything for that long with such passion and fanfare as we did about her. We were talking like some die hard movie star fans and we kept gushing and gushing. We were so engrossed that we forgot the IPLC was up and we’d had to get our gears back on start pushing those calls. One after another, every hour till it was our scheduled break time. You couldn’t just walk out of your chair and go for a leak. You had to stand up and call for your supervisor who saw the queue and if he could do with one less for a few minutes you could then go and relieve yourself. It almost felt like jail sometimes but then they’d say something about customer service and holding out till you’ve got them all lined up on your cross sale sheet at the end of the day. I couldn’t tell the difference between economic slavery and a white collar job but I sure could tell you the difference between piddling when you want to and when you get to.
It was close to lunch and we three normally waited till about the end of the queue so that we could go together. We’d keep up with the rats in our stomach and sometimes even stomach hunger pains but we kept it up till we three got to go together and it would often be at the fag end of the queue. Just about then a batch of new hires were coming onto the floor for a little live orientation on how things go and what one does to try and push those terrible offers to customers. Even a donkey wouldn’t want it but we had to sell it to them anyway and either way. We were kind of not-welcoming to such activities as our private space and the little private chit chats we had would normally become non existent and we’d have to wait till we were alone again. Free from the dumb questions these new hires kept asking.
Sample this for intelligence –
“How do you take calls?”
“How do you disconnect calls?”
And stuff like that – lord I tell you, you take calls over a headset and that’s exactly what we did, but a lot of folks out there would go a step further and put there heart into it only to be disappointed by someone across the line saying –
“Can you get me someone who speaks in English Please?” –
Now that’s a bomb and most of them would take the next 10 – 15 calls to recover from this disaster and emotional gripe but Garland, Josh and I never once thought about it and the moment we’d hear that, we’d say –
“Here you go whitey!”
And disconnect the call – as easy as that.
The new hires found their partners or buddies to sit by and waste the day with; things seemed calmer and settled. I turned towards the window to take a peak at the screaming sun as we were a few minutes away from lunch and I wanted to get out and get the breather a bit for that was the most awaited and desired of times we looked forward to; away from those incessant whiteys calling in and better together than going out in pairs with someone unknown or as boring as dumb ass new hire ….when I was called by a girl.
“Dave”. (she called out to me very softy)
“Dave”..(she called out to me a little louder)
“DAVE”…(LOUD) screamed Garland right near my ear –
I turned around and I saw her, if there’d be anything more sinful it would have to be her perfect beauty. She was everything I had dreamed of –
She was so refreshing and cool I could almost feel the sun hiding in shame.
“I’ve learnt that you are the best” she said.
“May I sit beside you and listen into what and how you say what you say”
Could I ever say No –
This moment I must have dreamed of a million times where a beautiful lady walks up to me and says these fine beautiful lines almost seemed like it wasn’t real.
I was staring at her right in the eyes and I could see through and through –
I was trying to mentally get myself together and be where she’d want me to be and focus on what she said but I was so dazed up and blown I couldn’t see myself coming out of that daze and I can tell you Garland and Josh were looking at me wondering if I’d say that she most certainly may sit and listen into my calls.
“Dave, you can go for lunch” screamed the floor supervisor.
That was what I really wanted at that point in time. I had no words I could remember, not anything that I could have possibly articulated but I sure said this.
You’re the angel in disguise!
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