Anuvab Pal – Why I Wrote 1-888-Dial-India [Part 2]

Read on…

I was leaving a building in Hyderabad’s Gachibowli area, the centre of Hyderabad’s outsourcing/ software world, with a Microsoft campus as nice as their headquarter in Redmond, Washington.    My day job at the time involved selling financial software to companies that did outsourcing work for investment banks (as discussed earlier in Part 1).  “Leave immediately” said the man I had gone to meet. He wasn’t throwing me out. He was telling me to rush hearing what time my flight back was. Cyberabad, as Gachibowli is apparently called, looked far nicer than Houston in terms of modern glass buildings, which might appear awful to a western eye, but to us on the wrong end of history when it comes to economic progress, a massive IBM and Accenture sign, instead of a goat on the outskirts of our cities, makes us proud. The roads leading in and out of them however are another story. That is, they aren’t there. There’s something in its place but it wouldn’t fit the traditional definition of “road”. Hence, his advice to flee to the airport with time in hand.

Anuvab Pal – Why I wrote 1-888-Dial-India [Part 1]

Anuvab Pal’s latest work of fiction- 1888 Dial India is a satirical take on some very topical issues, in characteristic flair which will have you rolling with laughter. Here is something about the book: 2009—year of the slump. America is in the grip of severe economic hardship and unemployment. The only numbers that are on the rise is the suicide rate. Arun Gupta, entrepreneur, lothario, Aramis cologne user, evangelist of new India’s new dreams, sees a glimmer of a business plan form out of the American crisis. He wants to save lives. And he wants to do it sitting in his baroque Navi Mumbai office. His idea is simple. If everything can be outsourced to India, why not the saving of American lives? Part rant, part satire, 1888 Dial India documents, through the politically incorrect words of its antihero, the dreams of corporate India. 

And here is what Anuvab has to say about writing this book… 

There seems to be a lot written about outsourcing. Which is good. We are apparently leading the world in repairing things, giving driving directions, solving credit card logistics, even helping the West with personalized butler services (the English tradition has to continue somehow). Some people say this is not very good for new India’s service classes. That it creates essentially the telecom equivalent of the assembly line worker and leaves them disoriented, without skills, staring out at 3 am into a flood of Gurgaon neon.  People criticizing a very public economic phenomenon are also good.  That’s two good things.

Nandini Sengupta – Babies from the Heart

Random Reads returns with Nandini Sengupta’s piece on how knowing the rules before making up the mind is a good way to prepare for the journey as an adoptive parent. Topping it up is an exclusive excerpt from her book- Babies from the Heart.

Recently, the niece of a close friend of mine, called to talk to me about the hows and whys of adoption. Like us, they are a DINK couple who wanted to adopt a baby girl. Since they are based out of Mumbai and Dubai, they had no idea where to go, who to talk to and what to do. So, they decided to talk to me and asked me everything from which agency to approach, how to get a handle on the new rules of adoption just released by the government, how long the process would take and what to do to prepare themselves for the baby. The long phone chat reminded me of the time when my husband and I were going through those same feelings of confused excitement. In a sense I relived those early days as I explained the new rules of adoption and the process that prospective parents now need to go through before they can take their baby home. Imagine my delight when the lady in question messaged back two months later to tell me that they had, in fact, become proud parents of an adopted baby girl.