For the first time, the thought entered my mind that the PI might have been as crooked as a dog's hind leg. And that he may have given me a bum steer. But the Lord never closes one door without opening another one. As I was returning, I spotted a magazine called Filmfare at a bookstand with Shabnam's picture on the cover, and bought it.
Mizz Henrietta Loretta, our Third Grade teacher, taught us about a crazy dude called Archie-something who lived long, long ago in some country called Grease. The fellow dived into a bathtub and was the first to discover that water starts overflowing from a tub when you fill it too much. He got so excited he jumped out of the tub, naked as a jay bird, shouting 'Eureka! Eureka!' That's exactly what I felt like doing on reading the article about Shabnam Saxena. Coz what I discovered in that magazine was nothing short of a gold mine. It gave the whole life story of the actress and was word for word exactly the same as the story told me by that PI. My respect for Mr Gupta went up a couple of notches. The guy was right on the money. But the magazine had two additional pieces of info Mr Gupta hadn't given me. It had Shabnam's address in Mumbai and even her birthday – 17 March, which happened to be exactly the same as the birthday given to me by Sapna Singh. That was the clincher which convinced me that Sapna and Shabnam were one and the same. I felt so happy, I guzzled down four cans of Coke!
That night I sat down at the desk in my room, took out a piece of paper and began composing a letter to Shabnam. 'My dearest darling Shabnam,' I began. 'I reckon a love like ours is as scarce as hen's teeth,' and before I knew it, I'd filled twenty pages. I put them all in an envelope, marked it 'Highly Confidential', wrote Shabnam's address and posted it first thing in the morning.
The next day, I wrote another letter to Shabnam. And then it became as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. In a week's time, I'd spent more cash on postage than on food and I was down to borrowing money from Bilal.
'You better get that BPO job,' he warned me.
So on 25 October I landed up in Connaught Place for the interview in my best clothes. I was shown into a swanky office with glitzy paintings, plush leather seats and a pretty receptionist.
The person conducting the interviews was a balding guy in his forties called Bill Bakshi. He sat behind a polished steel table dressed in denim jeans, a Buffalo Bills sweatshirt and a Yankees baseball cap. He looked at me with a puzzled expression. 'Mr Larry Page . . . I thought you would be an Indian Christian from Goa. But you look American. Is that right?' He spoke like one of those damn Yankees from New York.
'Yeah. I'm American. Always have been. Is that a problem?'
'No . . . no . . . not at all,' he said quickly. 'In fact, what could be better for us than having an American to teach the American accent? I am assuming you are a true blue American, someone who has actually lived in the US?'
'Yeah. I'm just visiting India. I live in Waco in Texas.'
He smiled, stretched his legs and put his hands behind his head. 'I am a Buffalo Bills fan, as you can see. How about you, Larry? Are you into American football?'
'You telling me! Being from the great State of Texas, I support America's team, the Dallas Cowboys – only team in NFL history to have won three Super Bowls in four years.'
'And what about the Houston Texans?'
'Sorry to say, but they are a shit team.'
'Why do you say that?'
'Coz they lose all their games. They had their chances in the 2004 season but the 22–14 loss to the Cleveland Browns sealed their fate. Since then the team's been pretty much in self-destruct mode. I mean the whole decision to draft Mario Williams as the number-one pick in preference to Reggie Bush or Vince Young was probably the biggest mistake in NFL draft history. The guy can't hit the broadside of a barn!'
'Wow, you seem to know the history of the NFL by heart. Do you have any previous industry experience?'
'Well, this ain't my first rodeo. I've been working with Walmart for nearly five years now.'
'Walmart? Mr Larry Page, you are hired. Welcome aboard.' He got up to shake my hand.
'Gee, thanks. But what am I supposed to do? I mean, can you tell me a little bit about your company?'
'Of course. Rai IT Solutions is a BPO company. We do many things for our overseas clients. We sell telephone services, handle consumer complaints, conduct market research, make airline bookings, compute income tax and process insurance claims. But our biggest operation is in geographic information systems. Our largest client is the ARA – American Roadside Assistance. You've heard of them?'
'Yeah. But our company vehicles have contracts with the Triple A.'
'Well, the ARA is very similar to the AAA. Now imagine yourself to be a customer of the ARA. Suppose your car breaks down or your subscription expires or you are lost on the highway.'
'Whereabouts on the highway?'
'Doesn't really matter. You can be lost in Alaska or Hawaii, for that matter. We've got all the road atlases. So what do you do when you get lost? You call a 1-800 number. That call comes to us, to our call centre in Gurgaon. And it is our customer-support associates who help out the American customer. The trick is not to let on that we are answering the call in India. The customer should think the call is being answered in America by Americans. That's where you come in.'
'Gee, to be honest, I'm not all that good at giving directions. I mean I get lost myself all the time on the I-35. Once I took just one wrong exit and ended up in New Mexico.'
'No, Larry. We are not asking you to work as a customer-support associate. We want you to be their accent trainer only. You need to teach our new call-centre employees everything about America – how Americans talk, what they play, what they eat, what they watch, so that when Deepak from Moradabad says he is Derek from Milwaukee, the caller in the US should not doubt him. Do you think you can help us do that?'
'You bet. Sounds like a piece of cake.'
'Perfect. Now see, an Indian would never use an expression like "piece of cake".' He slapped his thighs. 'A white American as our accent trainer . . . We've hit the bloody jackpot!' He leaned towards me. 'I hope you know that call centres in India work the graveyard shift – from eight p.m. to eight a.m. Will that be a problem?'
'Nah. I'll just sleep during the day. By the way, how much moolah will I be making on this job?'
'Well, we pay our Indian accent trainers twenty thousand rupees per month. For you we can go up to thirty thousand. Is that acceptable?'
Thirty grand! That meant I'd have enough money to go home in a month.
'When do I start?' I asked.
I began working for Rai IT Solutions the very next day, in their office complex in Gurgaon. A company van picked me up daily from Paharganj at seven p.m. and took me on an hour's drive, past the international airport, to a bustling city full of shopping malls and high-rise buildings. Gurgaon looked more like Dallas than Delhi.
The office complex was pretty impressive too. All tinted glass and marble. Inside, the call centre was just like a Walmart shop floor, a huge air-conditioned space with row upon row of cubicles with computers. There were hundreds of young Indians sitting on swivel chairs in front of the computer screens with telephone headsets on. The place hummed like a giant beehive and looked busier than a strip joint on buck night.
My job involved teaching a bunch of smart young boys and gals to speak like Americans. I started off with the brass tacks. 'There are three kinds of students,' I told the class.'One, those that learn by reading. Two, those that learn by observing. The rest have to pee on the electric fence by themselves.'
A pretty young thing in a tight little T-shirt put up her hand. 'Excuse me, Professor Page, what does peeing on an electric fence mean?'
Professor Page? My head got all swole up just hearing that word. I wished Mom could have been here to see her son being called Professor. 'It means, there ain't nothing in life worth your while that don't come hard, you understand? So you keep practising and quick as a hiccup you are gonna start to talk like me.OK folks, time to paint your butts white a
nd run with the antelope.'
It was as easy as that. Quickest thirty grand I've ever made in my life. The rest of my job involved sitting in an office on the mezzanine floor with a headset over my ears, watching the activity in the shop floor, listening in on the chatter, marking crosses against those 'customer-support associates' whose English and manners were not up to speed.
The whole call-centre thing amazed me. Here were Indian boys and gals with perfectly good Indian names who were becoming Robert and Susan and Jason and Jane during the night. In fact there were strict rules that they had to call each other by their American names even during the tea and dinner breaks.
'That's the problem,' a supervisor by the name of Mr Devdutt told me. He was a short guy in his fifties, with a crew-cut and wire-rimmed spectacles. 'These kids think they've really become Americans. Not only do they talk and dress like Americans, they are now even going out on dates like Americans. I work in the callcentre industry, Mr Page, but I will never allow my daughter to join it.'
'Why not?'
'Because call centres have become dens of vice and corruption. You don't know what I have to deal with every day. How can I enforce discipline when I have girls coming in dressed like prostitutes? They wear low-cut tops showing their breasts. One came wearing jeans so low, I could see her underwear. I have conducted random searches of girls' handbags and found condoms in there with their lipsticks. I have a strong suspicion that some of the associates are having sex in the toilets during the dinner break.'
'That's nothing,' I told him. 'Back home, I've seen boys and gals making out in the classrooms of Richfield High.'
'Hah! That may be tolerated in your morally corrupt America, but I cannot allow activities which go totally against Indian culture and traditions.' He pointed proudly to a poster stuck on his wall. 'No sex please, we're Indian,' it said.
I shook my head at the guy. He was so narrow-minded he could have peeped through a keyhole with both eyes.
'So what are you gonna do?' I asked him.
He smiled like a cunning fox. 'I'm having video cameras installed in the toilets. This way we shall close the barn door before the horses bolt.'
'Yeah. But be careful. You own barn door's open.'
'What?'
'Your fly's unzipped,' I said.
He looked down and went all red in the face.
Before I knew it, four weeks had passed. My life fell into a nice routine. I would work at the call centre all night and then return to the guesthouse in the morning and sleep most of the day. In the evening, like clockwork, I would write a letter to Shabnam and try her mobile. I didn't get a reply to either, but I continued to hope.
I learnt plenty of jargon at the call centre and made many friends among the associates. These were young kids, fresh out of college, on their first jobs. They wanted to party, to shop, to have a good time. There was Vincent (a.k.a. Venkat), who was such a smooth-talker he could sell a drowning man a glass of water. There was AJ (Ajay), who was always a day late and a dollar short. Penelope (Priya) had the best stats in the business, meeting her weekly targets faster than anyone, and Gina (Geeta) had half the guys drooling over her. Reggie (Raghvendra) was so short, he'd have to stand on a brick to kick a duck in the ass! And Kelly's (Kamala's) sambar vada was the best food I ever wrapped my lips around.
I learnt to watch a game called cricket with the guys, which was about as exciting as watching grass grow, but bursting crackers on Diwali was way more fun than the fourth of July. The girls shared their tiffin and their secrets with me. The unmarried ones talked about the guys they liked and the married ones cribbed about their mothers-in-law. All of them were constantly matchmaking for me, without realizing it was like going to a goat's house for wool.
Before I knew it, 23 November arrived. I had a booking to fly to America the next day. And that's when it hit me – I didn't want to leave. It was crazy. Suddenly this crowded, congested city where cows roamed the streets and beggars slept naked seemed to be the most exciting place on earth. The mosquito-infested, crummy guesthouse had begun to feel like home. The call-centre job felt like a million dollars. India had started doing funny things to me. I had taken to dipping biscuits in tea before nibbling them. I had begun eating masala dosa with my hands. I enjoyed taking a bath with a bucket. I felt no shame in getting a haircut from the barber shop on the pavement. Sometimes I even stepped out into the streets of Paharganj in my pyjamas, which I wouldn't be caught dead in back home. India had become an extended holiday. No bills to pay, no driving on I-35, no cooking to do, no tiffs with Johnny Scarface. And it wasn't as if I had plenty of friends waiting for me back home. Even Mom, the last time I spoke with her, seemed more excited about her fourth divorce than my first marriage. But the real reason I didn't want to return was Shabnam. There was a little voice in my heart which kept saying maybe she's still shooting in that town in the Cape. Maybe she didn't get my letters. So I decided to give myself another fortnight and made a new booking for Wednesday 5 December. If I didn't hear from her by then, I would say goodbye to her, chuck her out of my life, and go home.
Truth be told, I didn't hear a squeak out of Shabnam even in the next ten days. But I couldn't take the flight on 5 December. That's coz a very weird thing happened on 3 December. I was heading to the bank to convert my rupees into dollars. Leaving my wallet in the guesthouse, I had put all my cash, my mobile and my passport in a money belt around my waist and was just about to cross the street when I saw a huge crowd of people marching towards me. The procession was led by the most frightening girl I'd ever seen. She had a face as ugly as a mud fence. To top it all, she was blind as a bat and walked with the help of a stick. Following her were three people all wrapped in white, looking like ghosts. Behind them was a guy in an all-black skeleton costume. And behind this party was a whole group of young people, dressed like students. They held up placards with the title 'CRUSADERS FOR BHOPAL' and chanted slogans like 'We demand compensation' and 'Do or die'.
The procession stopped very close to where I was standing. The people in white lay down in the middle of the road, pretending to be dead, while the skeleton guy danced around them.
'Are you guys celebrating Hallowe'en?' I asked a young lady in jeans and slippers with a cloth bag hanging from her left shoulder and a big red dot on her forehead.
She looked at me like I was some kind of vermin. 'Excuse me?'
'I said is this the Indian version of Hallowe'en? Back home we celebrate it on 31 October. But why do you folks need to ask for compensation like this? Don't they give you chocolates and sweets here?'
She went wild. 'You think our protest against the worst industrial accident in the world is funny?'
'Hey, hey, hey, don't get your knickers in a twist!' I tried to calm her.
'Are you insulting me, you swine? You must be on the payroll of Dow Chemicals!' she screamed at me.
'Look lady, I don't know what you're talking about. I've never heard of this Dow dude. You're barking up the wrong tree.' I threw up my hands.
Another student, a young guy with a goatee, tapped me on the shoulder. 'What did you just say? Did you call my colleague a dog?'
A third guy, with a weird hairdo, who looked meaner than a striped snake, snapped his fingers at me. 'Aren't you American?' he asked.
'Yeah, I'm American,' I replied.
'Hey! Looks like we've got the son of bloody Warren Anderson here,' he shouted, and caught me by the scruff of my sweater.
'Come on, give us our money,' a man in dirty kurta pyjamas demanded.
'Yes, we are not going to wait any longer,' the guy with the goatee snarled at me.
'No, guys.' I shook my head. 'I'm not going to give any money. This is not how you should be trick-or-treating.'
'The bastard won't part with his money. Let's teach the bloody American a lesson!' the weird-hairdo guy shouted and the crowd pounced on me like dogs on fresh meat. The men started beating me up. The women began tearing off my clothes. I tried to fight them off, but I
was like a gnat in a hailstorm. Before I knew it, they'd taken off my sweater. Two minutes later, my shirt was shredded, my vest was in tatters, one of my sneakers was gone and I was wrestling with a fat girl in pigtails who was trying desperately to take my jeans off. I managed somehow to ward her off. And that's when I discovered that my money-belt had disappeared.
Mizz Henrietta Loretta had taught us about the weird customs of foreign tribes. I remember she told us about the Aztec tribe in Argentina, which ate human skulls, and the Maoris of Mexico, who sold their daughters. But I didn't know that Indians also had peculiar customs, like beating up Americans if they didn't give chocolates on Hallowe'en.
I trudged back to the guesthouse looking like Shawn Michaels after the Undertaker had pummelled him in the famous 1997 Hell in a Cell match on WWF.
'What happened to you?' Bilal cried.
'I got beaten up by a bunch of loonies. All my money is gone. And so is my passport. What the hell do I do now?'
'You need to visit the American Embassy to get a new passport,' advised Bilal.
The American Embassy in Chanakyapuri was a nice building. It had a huge lawn with fountains, overlooked by a massive golden eagle. The Marines at the gate didn't seem too happy to see a fellow American. They told me to go round the corner to another building which handled passport and visa stuff.
There were two queues, one for Indians and one for Americans. The Indian queue was a mile long. Whole communities appeared to be living in front of the Embassy with their suitcases and slippers. There was a Sikh family saying their prayers. A harassed-looking mother was feeding her children. A couple of men were playing cards in the shade. Luckily there were no Americans needing visas and I managed to enter through the gate in just ten minutes.