All Chetan Bhagat books deal with the problems if the Indian youth and how they tackle it well to reach their goals. One Night at the Call Centre is the second book written by Chetan Bhagat after the much publicized Five Point Someone. If Five Point Someone dealt with the life inside an IIT campus this book features an incident happened in the life of 6 call centre employees on one night. The author successfully depicts their problems and how they successfully overcame it. Call Centre jobs are hot picks for India’s youth brigade today as they can make some quick bucks through somewhat non risky jobs. You do not need to have a degree with high marks to obtain a call centre job, all you need is to have a sweet voice which can be molded into foreign accent and some cool temper and patience with the help of which they can deal with the callers.




The book opens up with the author meeting up with an attractive woman on a train journey en route to Delhi. The woman then convinces the author to make the story she was to tell into his next book. At first the author dismisses her proposal but later when she tells him that there was a divine intervention in the story, he agrees to her terms and promised her that he will write a book based upon it. All the Chetan Bhagat books sets up on a narrative style with one of the main protagonists narrating the whole story. The character whom he chooses to essay that role in this book is Shyam, a call centre employee who aims to be a team leader in the company soon. He works currently for a call centre named “Connexions” at Gurgaon. Every day a cab will come and pick him and his colleagues from their respective houses and drop them at the centre. His shift normally begins at 10:30 pm and ends at 6.30 am. Now the author carefully illustrates each and every character during the first pages of the narration. Esha was an aspiring model who has certainly the most gorgeous looking girl in their group. She was constantly rejected from fashion shows due to her poor height. Priyanka was Shyam’s ex-girlfriend and was a tough cookie in the group. She broke up with him due to her mother’s persistence request to marry a successful guy instead of a person with tiny jobs. Radhika was a married woman and was working in order to support her husband. She married Anuj after a long courtship and was staying with her ultra traditional in-laws. Varun Malhotra alias Vroom was a jolly lad who loved pizza, throttle bursting machines and boozing. He used to work as a journalist but was chucked out. Military Uncle was a middle aged man who broke up with his son and daughter in law who are in US and was working at the call centre as the chat manager. He was a man of few words but very loving and caring at heart. All these people were working at the same bay; a term referred to the company group whose clients they were handling. These six people worked for a company called Western Appliances and their bay was called Western Appliances Strategic group or WASG.
WASG people were constantly monitored by their head Subhash Bakshi, a person who would like always to cash on other’s credit. All the guys working in the group was given alias names like Shyam was called Sam and Vroom was called Victor. Bakshi often loaded Shyam with lot of his work by luring him offering the post of the team leader. Priyanka meanwhile had decided to marry Ganesh, a geek working in the US for Microsoft. Though Shyam still had feelings for her he did not show it outside. Vroom too has feelings for Esha who in turn was concentrating only on her modeling career. The whole group goes through a lot of trauma that night, individually and as a group. Moreover Bakshi turns cheat by sending the brilliant website work done by Shyam and Vroom on his own name. He also threatens that he will have to downsize the number of employees in order to save the company with himself getting transferred to Boston, US. Radhika founds out that her husband is cheating on her and gets upset. Esha confesses to Shyam that she slept with a designer in exchange for a fashion contract but later found out that she was being cheated. Bored with life everyone in the group decides to go for an outing in a cab. On their return Vroom accidentally jams the cab into a construction site and the cab were just hanging on pieces of rods. With death in front of them and no one to call for help as their mobiles showed zero range all six were in a fix. Suddenly a call came into Shyam’s mobile and it was from God!!! God in turn asks the group to tell their real life ambitions. All of them talks to god and everyone felt motivated after that. God asks them to follow their instinctive paths and also reminded them to teach Bakshi a lesson. They then get out of the mess and reach the office. They then chalk out a plan with the help of which they trap Bakshi as well as save their jobs. Priyanka dumps her fiancé and decides to marry Shyam. The most catching thing in this book is when the author finds out who the lady in the train really was. A great end to a good decent novel.
One night at the call centre was adapted into a Hindi Film called “Hello” which had Sharman Joshi, Sohail Khan, Isha Koppikkar, Amrita Arora, Gul Panag and Sharat Saxena essaying the principal six characters. The film also had Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif in special appearances. But the film sunk without a trace at the box office all thanks because of its poor make and ordinary performances by its main leads. This book was a best seller at the time it released and is still one of the most sought after books in India. I sincerely recommend that you read this book at least once. Promise it will not be a letdown…

One Night @ the Call Center or ON@CC is a novel written by Chetan Bhagat and first published in 2005.explores issues faced by call centre employees.
His second book ‘One Night @ The Call Center’ establishes that Chetan Bhagat is one of best storytellers of the new genre,a writer met a young girl on an overnight train journey.