Department of English MKBU
Name: Kinnari Halvadiya
Sem: 4
Paper No.: 13 NEW LITERATURE
Sub/ Topic: One Night @ call center self-help
book
Batch: 2019 - 2021
Submitted to: S. B. Gardi
Hello Reders,
So, Here I am going to
write my academic Assignment which is related with my masters, MA English literature
sem4. Here I am going to write the one topic which I have taken from the novel
of Chetan Bhagat’s One @ the call center. {ON@CC}. I have chosen the topic is ON@CC
SELF HELP BOOK. First let’s coin out the term SELF HELP BOOK.
What is self - help book?
A self-help book is one that is written with the intention to
instruct its readers on solving personal problems. The books take their name
from Self-Help, an 1859 best-seller by Samuel Smiles, but are also known and classified under "self-improvement", a term that is a modernized version of self-help.
Self-help books moved from a niche position to being a postmodern cultural phenomenon in the late twentieth
century. it is clear that self-help books have
had 'a very important role in developing social concepts of disease in the
twentieth century', and that they 'disseminate these concepts through the
general public so that ordinary people acquire a language for describing some
of the complex and ineffable features of emotional and behavioural life'
History of Self-Help books
Self-help
has been around for thousands of years, and it has been loved and hated for
just as long. The earliest progenitor of self-help books was an Ancient
Egyptian genre called “Sebayt” an instructional literature on life (“Sebayt”
means “teaching”). A letter of advice from father to son, The Maxims of Pathotype,
written circa 2800 B.C., advocated moral behaviour and self-control. Ancient
Greek texts offered meditations, aphorisms, and maxims on the best ways to
live.
Characteristics of Self-help
book
·
Self-help book is considered as Popular
Psychology such as romantic relations or human mind/behaviour, it is
easy to read and provide some kind of encouragement and motivation to live life
in a better way. There are many self-help books available in the market like
‘How to stop worrying and start living’ by Dale Carnegie, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Stephen R. Covey, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran and many more.
·
Stephen R. Covey, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran and many more.
·
n the self-help book story about
problems of the life and how they live in their life. Writer use characters who suffer in their
life. Characters sharing experience and enables them to give each other support.
So Basically, this
novel ON@CC quite famous and the was recreated but the Author of the novel is controversial
or we can say not much sensible person according to the eye of literature
person.
So, let’s jump on
the introduction of the novel….
Author’s Introduction:
-
CHETAN BHAGAT.
(born 22 April 1974)
is an Indian author and columnist. He was included in Time magazine's list of World's 100 Most
Influential People in 2010.
He
has written nine novels and three non-fiction books. His first novel, Five Point Someone,
was published in 2004. His novels have been listed as bestsellers.
Five of Chetan Bhagat's novels have
been adapted into Bollywood films like
Hello in 2008 (based on One Night @ the Call
Center),
3 Idiots in 2009 (based on Five Point Someone),
Kai Po Che! in 2013 (based on The 3 Mistakes of
My Life);
2 States in 2014 (based on his
novel of the same name)
Half Girlfriend in
2017 (based on his novel of the same name).
Bhagat has also
written the scripts for Bollywood films like Kick in 2014 and adapted his stories for
the movies Kai Po Che! and Half Girlfriend. Bhagat won the Filmfare Award for Best Screenplay
for Kai Po Che! at the 59th Filmfare Awards in 2014. He is
also often found in controversies at twitter.
He is the author of
these five famous novels. In there he wrote about the present scenario of the
society. His main moto to influence the youth and national development issues.
He is motivational speaker too.
Bhagat begins his novel with
three questions and urges the readers to focus on them and answer the questions
most honestly. The questions are-
It seems that the author is
helping us to allow ourselves to know our fears and to overcome it. He is
insisting us to share discuss our private and difficult problems. It
provides us with a sense of community. Self-help can mean two different things. On the one hand, it’s
simply a way of reading, a deliberately unsystematic pursuit of life lessons:
The reader might glean wisdom from any kind of book, dipping in and casting
aside according to her own preferences and needs. Or, as most of us use it today, “self-help” can refer to a particular kind
of book intended to make the reader’s life better — those innumerable how-to
guides. (Scutts) Aristotle believed that reading had healing capabilities. While
self-help book buyers may not be cured of whatever ails them, feeling better is
not to be entirely discounted. (Lamb-Shapiro) All human beings, at some
moment in their lives, need healing, be it physical wound or psychological
instability. There are certain problems in life of the youth which Bhagat's
book tries to solve.
The narrative technique in
Bhagat's text move in such a way that first it asks some questions which makes
it a directly a self-help book. The structural design of the book also gives a
self-help furnishing. From three questions the idea of god also develops and is
connected in the narrative - the call from god episode. As a true literature, this book also tells a
story and weaves the self-help elements in such a way that it rarely fails to
amaze its readers. The tendency to tell the story emerges from his good reading
and understanding the human psyche. He understands the psycho realism. After
the questions, Bhagat writes,
Do not think too much
Self-help in some way, can be said as phony
literature. It claims that by reading the self-help book people will discover
the secrets of life but Micki McGee rightly observes, "No one, try as they
may, can invent themselves".
Chetan Bhagat has written this novel about the problems of six young
Indian middle-class call center workers and how they psychologically suffering
from exploitation of the corporate world, bossism and their personal anxiety of
different broken relations. He wrote on the contempt ovary issues relating to
the young people and gives them solutions and way to come out of that problems
that we can see in the scene of God’s call.
Chetan Bhagat has written very interesting Prologue and Epilogue with
acknowledgement in the beginning of his novel where he has given the
self-evaluation exercise where he asked reader three questions and give space
to write answers which allows readers to look inside them and think about
themselves. Such thing give thought provoking insight to the readers’ mind and self-evaluation
must be done.
Phone Call from God
(God’s message/ inner call)
This
episode of God’s message to six young call center workers on how to get success
in life is the climax of the novel when they are just returning from nightclub
and because of Vroom’s drunkard state, car trapped and hanged at construction
site where they can’t get network to ask for help and suddenly God’s call came,
maybe it is real or only technique Deux ex Machina that is used there. He speaks to all of them and gives them suggestions to improve their life.
God’s message:
God first ask everyone about their life and everyone has their own
personal problems. God give advice to them that ‘nothing depends on me or on
destiny; it’s only your Karma’ and also said that ‘I always with
you but you all ignore me, you all ignore your inner Voice’, this suggest
that we need to listen our self/our inner voice, don’t listen anyone. God told
them that ‘many times you all can’t get my voice because of modern busy life
of networks’; God’s call considers as Inner call that
everyone should listen carefully. God suggests four important features to be
successful in life.
1) Bit of Imagination that every human has
2) Intellectuality
3) Self-confidence
4) Too painful – Failure (is key to success)
‘One should
experience it, feel it and taste it and then there is nothing which make you
afraid’
This message inspires all six call center workers as well as many other
young people who are facing same problems in life, they encourage and motivate
from this advice which is self-help feature of this novel. We can say that Privilege of health over disease is
subverted in this novel. After that, God also advises them on how
to get their vehicle out of the construction site. The conversation with God
motivates the group to such an extent that they get ready to face their
problems with utmost determination and motivation. Meanwhile Vroom and Shyam
hatch up a plan to throw Bakshi out of the call center and prevent the closing
of Connections call center, whose employees are to be downsized radically. When
they emerge out of danger, they have clear-cut goals in their mind. On
returning to the Call Center, they carry out their plans with dexterity.
In epilogue, we see one line like:
‘It is true thought; we all have a dark side – something we don’t like about ourselves, something that makes us angry and something we want to change about ourselves. The difference is how we choose to face it.’ Here Chetan Bhagat connects to us with all character, and says that how we handle these types of situation in our life, that depends on our self not on destiny or god but we are maker of our own self.
Conclusion:
-
Thus, the journey of Shyam & Vroom to be successful
in life, in book there is self-help features which motivates Indian youth to
listen their inner voice and find their own true way to get success in life by
their work hard which proves it as self-help book. Hypothetical
it is said and believe that literature makes people better, literature enhances
over life skills literature makes us humbles more mature in terms of
psychology. That text gives life lessons
"self-help book" means it to self-improvement and self-confidence of
characters. It gives solutions to problems and is helpful for building personal
philosophy. Text gives lessons that the author has changed the Indian English
fiction and inaugurated a new era of Indian novels to represent the realities
of life of youngsters. And youngsters love and career. Text is basically a call
to India and to the young generation surrounded by it. It visibly examined how
globalization has affected the call center employer in the name of raising the
financial systems. Text gives life skills that we want to earn more and more
money in their life.
References:
Lamb-Shapiro, Jessica.
"A Short History of Self-Help, The World’S Bestselling Genre".
Publishing Perspectives, 2013,
https://publishingperspectives.com/2013/11/a-short-history-of-self-help-the-worlds-bestselling-genre/.
Accessed 12 Feb 2021.
Scutts, Joanna.
"‘Self-Help’ And ‘Literature’ Serve The Same Purpose". Forge, 2020, https://forge.medium.com/self-help-and-literature-serve-the-same-purpose-d2f31d191449.
Accessed 12 Feb 2021.
Research
Paper: Portrayal of IT Professionals in Chetan Bhagat's One Night @ The Call
Centre: A Critique,http://eltweekly.com/2018/01/research-paper-portrayal-of-it-professionals-in-chetan-bhagats-one-night-the-call-centre-a-critique-2/, April 03, 2018.
Abhay
Verma,Full Rapid Summary of the Book ONE NIGHT @ CALL CENTRE: CHETAN BHAGAT:
PART 2.” Rapid Reading, 1 Apr. 2020,
rapidreadingblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/16/part-2/.
https://rapidreadingblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/16/part-2/
Bhagat,
Analysis Of One Night At The Call Center By Chetan Bhagat, https://www.cram.com/essay/Analysis-Of-One-Night-At-The-Call/PJXKUC3CXG,January
24, 2021
Thank
You
Words:
2106
I’m going to read this. I’ll be sure to come back. thanks for sharing. and also This article gives the light in which we can observe the reality. this is very nice one and gives indepth information. thanks for this nice article... Book reading app
ReplyDeleteThank you so much
ReplyDelete