BANGALORE CALLING

In this lively and deeply telling collection the author transports us into an Alice in Wonderland Bangalore call centre training session in which students learn broad-'a' American English imagine American cities and don take-home American names. They create an offshore piece of America. Bangalore Calling is more than a book; it is a powerful wake-up call to look sharp at the cultural core of global capitalism.' Arlie Hochschild Professor Emeritus at U.C. Berkeley author of The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling and co-editor of Global Woman: Nannies Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy'Entertaining and humane Bangalore Calling is very much a book of our times. It is both a moving introduction to the strange world of the Bangalore call centre and a reminder of the human and cultural costs of globalization.' Sam Miller author of Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity and former BBC correspondent in IndiaThe employees at the Callus call centre in Bangalore juggle false identities abusive customers and the tugs of family and community. An Anglo-Indian trainer is aghast at the overt Americanisms adopted by her eager trainees. A van driver who yearns for a son petitions the god Ayyappan by playing devotional songs inside the van. A brash Jimi Hendrix-loving agent tries to change the music and stokes the driver's deep resentment. A young girl travels across the great divide between the slum she lives in and the shiny glass complex where she works as a toilet cleaner. Through fifteen linked stories Bangalore Calling explores the social costs of outsourcing – the erosion of cultures the displacement of vernacular languages and accents – in a world that's not yet flat.>