Real life fiction: genre and truth claims in popular call centre narratives

ABSTRACT Chetan Bhagat’s blockbuster, was the first popular novel about business process outsourcing work – but not the last. Since 2007, several new authors, including Vikrant Shukla, Shruti Saxena, Anish Trivedi, Brinda Narayan and Makhudar Yadav have all launched careers in fiction writing by employing call centre narratives, and drawing specifically on their corporate work experience. Much like popular compilations of ‘true’ stories by Sudhindra Mokhasi, these ostensibly fictional texts perform a variety of functions: instructing prospective call centre employees on the industry, breaking down negative perceptions of call centre work and entertaining the reader with tales of youthful hijinks. Perhaps most importantly, however, popular texts interpolate a growing Indian middle class who wishes to consume the products of the west without either leaving South Asia or conceding any cultural loss, absence or inferiority. In so doing, popular call centre texts reconfigure narratives of globalization for domestic use, which may be why these novels and anthologies have gained far more popularity than the prevalence of business process outsourcing work alone would suggest.