Hello. My name is James, how can I help you?

I’ve just been very angry these last few days. In the last two days, I’ve met Indian people who are ignorant about the plight of my country, and I’ve also met people in England who are ignorant and choose to live in their own little bubble.

I was having a causal conversation with a friend when she mentioned that she was pissed off because she had trouble connecting to a call centre, she said “he had the strongest Indian accent and yet, his name was James.”

I’ve heard this from a lot of people in England, comments about the Indian accent or their inability to help them because they cannot understand English accents, so much so that a number of banks now advertise that their call centres are based in the UK.

I understand their point of view, when I am looking for a solution or help, the last thing I would need would be to speak to a person who doesn’t understand me.

There’s also another argument that call centres in India are taking jobs away from UK, which is fair. If jobs from my country were given to people from another country, when there are capable people to do these jobs, it would upset me as well.

What I fail to understand is the agro that James, John, Tony or George is given because of a decision made by a corporate to save some money.

India has a population of over a billion people. I am ashamed of my government’s inability to control its population in the first place and secondly at its inability to be able to provide a decent standard of living for the population.

Call centre jobs in India have given hope of a decent life to people who struggled to earn a living or feed their family.

Multinational companies have exploited India’s strong population to their advantage.

The only people making profit from your call not being understood by a foreign person are these companies.

As far as the accent is concerned, you cannot change it, English in not my first language. It’s a different part of the world, where people look different, dress different and speak different. Just because it’s different from a lifestyle in another part of the world, doesn’t make any less of a culture.

And yes, I do know people who are James and Johns and Adams who live in India, that’s because a small percentage of people in my country are Christians.

To be fair, would you understand James if he said his name was Veraswamynathan?

Glorifying the geeks

I spent my Sunday evening watching Richard Hammond talk about Airbus 380 and its mechanisms. Not because I had no say in what I can watch, being in the company of a very ego-centric male type. But because I was enjoying it, the program managed to get a few ‘o’ and ‘wow’ reactions from me.

When I think about it now, English television is dominated by geeks. Stephen Fry, the quiz wizard who parts with all information irrelevant. The Top Gear trio – Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May who make ‘know your car mechanism’ fun, and more recently James May’s 21st Century inventions.
I remember when I was 10, knowing beyond your science books was not cool. There was the class geek and then there was the cool kid. And no body wanted to be a class geek, but now even the cool kids want to be class geeks.

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Slumdog Millionaire

I haven’t really seen the movie. So, of course, I am in no position to offer a critique, but I have heard what a lot of people have to say – and everyone who has seen the movie, has something to say.


Someone at work, said, “It’s an amazing story of hope.” Step has never been to Mumbai, and what she sees is the image of Mumbai that she imagines it to be. If it’s slums and poverty, be it.


People in Mumbai are for some reason not happy with the movie? They feel that the movie portrays Mumbai as a third world under belly. And they are not happy to see that side of the city. But are the pictures not real? Did Danny Boyle create the slums, did he put together a set where happy faces of young boys are jumping over piles and piles of garbage and waste.


Gautami is a young girl who lives in the slums in Mumbai. She has never been to the cinema before watching this film. She shares an opinion that may contrasts the views of a lot of Mumbaikars. Gautami associates with the film, the slums portrayed “are just like” the ones she lives in she says. That is how women wash clothes and children play in our “Ambedkar nagar”, are her words exactly.


I am from Mumbai. I know the slums are the side of the city that no one wants to see, that everyday people drive past these slums in their fancy cars, it’s not something that people of the city are proud of, but we would never know what it feels like to live in slums, we want people to see the high rises, and the world class restaurants and hotels that we are proud of, because that is what 'we' associate with.


I don’t suppose Danny Boyle had any intentions to demean the city through the film. I don’t think he showed us the side that we’re not aware of. Maybe, it’s just something we are not proud of, don’t you think?


The film is based on a book written by Vikas Swarup, an Indian author, funny then that an Indian person writing about the slums is okay, but the moment the West portrays that side of the city, it’s a biased perspective. I agree that the West has a strange fascination for things that may seem normal to you and me – polio, superstition and poverty. Probably, one of the main reasons why movies with these core subjects about India have made it to the Oscars ‘Documentary Short’ list this year!

I do care about the people in Palestine. I do have an opinion about the thousand innocent lives that are lost in the war. So, don't judge me as being anti-Palestine or support Israel's decision to go on war. I am here to support no one. Wars around the world are the intent of political agendas and innocent people pay a heavy price for it.

A friend of mine told me that there's word going around to ban Starbucks and Marks and Spencer because the owners are Jewish! Funny thing is when the world was still reeling from the aftermath of terrorism, there was a huge debate about stereotyping Islam as a religion that supported terrorism. One rotten fruit doesn't spoil the crop. I personally advocated that theory, if a terrorist is Muslim, it doesn't imply that all Muslims are terrorists. Stereotyping in any form - based on ethnicity, religion, caste, creed and colour is wrong. Funny that the same Muslim who dislike being stereotyped would advocate stereotyping.