One team at the Call centre

This is my experience, learning that I have acquired through my stint at a call center for 45 days precisely. Being a social worker and an anti call center guy ( which is what some activist social work students are) it was strange why I even decided to sit for an interview for a position at a call center ; but I need to say it happened to me. I wanted to take it and taste how it actually is. So I was in one of the reputed BPOs in Chennai. I had my cabs picking and dropping me at my home (something that my neighbors kept an eye on). I only attended the training part of the call center job but I had adequate discussions, debates, observations to get the feel of what a call center is; which was the my only objective of being there.

The team:

Since I was in a voice process for British Mortgage Process, the team was a fairly small group leaving very little chances for sub groups. The team comprised of fresher’s, experienced, insane, matured, childish, intellect, fun loving, quick learners, anything that you could ask for. It was one of the perfect groups that a trainer would ask for

Mohammed ( RahmZ) – Business man to the core, with cool matured head on his shoulders. Studied in London, but a Chennai man.

Sumesh Menon – Play boy, Movie man, one of the quiet people, time keeper; someone who is packed with lot of experience both from personal and BPO perspective.

Ebin – Young, handsome, modern, active person. He was my partner whenever we played Table Tennis.

Hilda – The only girl in the team and a good person to relate with; aspired to settle in London.

Mark – The techno modern guy and the most traditional Anglo Indian I have ever come across in my life. A complete play boy, choco dude; a perfect example for a fresher.

Myself - As usual I was myself; before I turn into the serious business phase of my life I wanted to have unlimited fun. Those who know can imagine what I am intending to say.

Relationships:

The first thing that comes to mind when it is about call center is the nature of relationships. I need to admit that flirting is at its best, everybody and anybody flirts (there are few exceptions) irrespective of gender; which was very hard for me to digest. The relationships are more in the mode of give and take policy. I need to admit that the work culture and unstable nature of the work sometimes made people think from a very ‘I’ centric approach.

What I like the most is everybody addresses each other with their names, irrespective of what their designation is and what their age is. That sounds very professional, very respectful as well. You could see well defined professional limits.

Lifestyle:

Many a times the general population, especially the social work, sociology community is very harsh on the lifestyle of call center employees. Of course they act very differently to the culture of the land. But there is one thing to be looked at; any culture or tradition is prone to change; it is acquired and accepted by the kind of people you interact the most. The more you interact with Tamil people you get Tamilian culture imbibed in you, the more you relate and interact with Europeans they more you imbibe their culture. So these call center employees interact more with westerners and they are to a certain extent forced to respond to the callers as just like a westerner. Talking to them in their accent and their style needs a certain effort to appreciate their culture more than yours and need to be imbibed in you. So obviously they do exhibit western culture.

Training:

I have been blessed to be trained by some fine people. Caroline and Chris, for the accent training. One of the most crucial learning that I had is the way they trained us, in social work sometimes the boundary of  professional relationship tends to be little undefined and both the trainees and trainers do not understand the professional limits. I saw the trainers especially Caroline spending a lot of personal time with us and still was able to be extra-ordinarily good in terms of her training sessions. She is always ready and prepared to give live examples and it seemed that training people came very naturally to her. At no point of time was I deviated from the content of the training which some of my fellow team mates could not given the beauty she expresses too. But for me I could not see anything more than the content of her training coz I always admire trainers and trainers who are more fluid in process and solid in content. We enjoyed every little bit of our games , activities and as usual I was the joker man in the bunch of cards. Not to be undermined that I always enjoyed being a team man, someone who cheers up the group than being a leader.

Culture:

It is this part I always felt that I am an alien and kept saying this is not my world, you are just an explorer. Even in my own world of social work, I have been seen as an old school and so on. So this was totally out of me and I always struggled both within the team and the mainstream workers as well. I am somebody who could easily socialize but I learned this socializing world is nowhere near me.  Skipped brilliantly the part where we need to barge in to some live calls and learn, was somehow irritated when some trainers would flirt with Hilda, my team mate where I didn't  mind if it’s my own team mates or if my team mates did that with other girls. I felt more secured with my team but the moment they took me out of the group I felt so much more insecure because there were only five more souls who can understand me and my such old fashioned thoughts.

The world never really cared about the plight of a common man, the most disadvantaged sections of the society, but they did just like some hi-fi, not so bothered community would do over a cup of coffee or tea or at a bar. I would not blame their understanding, to an extent they did have some details to their knowledge of the marginalized but may be not as in-depth as it has to be. The world probably didn't have enough time even to their own families and the society they live in, and then it would be naive on my part to expect them to be more realistic in their knowledge of the deprived. It was baffling at the early part of it but I started accepting it since I kept saying to myself that I was only there to experience what it is and not to change that to how I want it to be. And I must admit that there were some seriously socially conscious people too.

As for the time that I was in there I never really felt that I was in Chennai or India except the faces of the same race, the language, the accent, the styles, the looks, the stares, the hugs, the wishes, the brotherhood, the love everything looked so very plastic to the Chennai I saw and lived in for twenty two long years.

I seriously feel they must be trained in striking balance between being a European on the floor and a real Indian off it.

The cab part of it:

It was very baffling for me to see people address a person with no real respect of a human being specially someone who you give your life to, at both the ends of your shifts, I mean the cab drivers. The drivers called them sir and madam, the employees never really acknowledged them except for telling them their pick up points or dropping points. Not many even spoke to each other and come there a mistake in timing the drivers used to be the scapegoat. I felt a lot of organizational skills involved in it and given a choice I would have loved to take on the job of arranging the cabs as well which is far more challenging than a call center voice team member.

What I gained??

The most frequent question thrown at me when I chose to do that instead of having successfully qualified for a JRF and having received some job offers in social work was , “ Why the hell did you choose to work in a call center ? ”, “ have you gone nuts? ” and here goes the list of answers…..

1.     Rupees Fifteen Thousand which was needed at that time
2.    Sense of self satisfaction that I did not choose an NGO or any other role for such a short time which would have questioned my professional ethics.
3.   Learnt a bit of serious English
4.     Some serious insight on Call Center Culture
5.   Admired training skills of a few trainers
6.    Above all some true, funny, lovely people in life in the form of my team mates. 

Final words....

Before I close this long blog, I must admit that I enjoyed the time being there and learnt a lot. I admit seeing some serious traditional people out there who could strike a balance between being a European when needed and being themselves off the floor such as Shiva, but I could observe that his base in being himself with this culture was set way before he could come into the call center culture. So the young ones, fresher’s who never really came off the tougher tides of life in the society are much more vulnerable than anyone. Well this might be a better source of income seen by some and that’s definitely not my perspective at all unless the employers care about preserving their employee’s cultural identity which is what decides how they run their lives, than just making profits by turning them to Americans, Europeans, and so on… 

Understanding Gender

Dear all,

Recent days, I have been amazed by the rise of lots of Social Activists and i need to believe the fashion trend now is to have social activism views. I appreciate in a certain way that at least there are people think about things happening around them and not just being concentrated about their own salary, computers, entertainment, etc... In another way it is also painful to see immature comments being passed from masses and more so painful when it comes from influential people. 

I am going to elicit my experience and viewpoints about the recently hot topic, "Women Safety". I know I am touching a very sensitive area but I need to because if I do not then who else will (my professional credibility). 

I am not a great statistician, but i am not giving you senseless information either. I am a very active person in Facebook and you all know that’s an ideal modern platform for social activism. I see a lot of posts demanding punishments for rape as in the Arab Countries and they demand freedom as in Europe countries.

That’s too absurd, you live in India, need punishments as in Arab, wants freedom as in Europe. I just cannot understand it. One cannot be that way. All the hypes surrounding the Rape issues recently are more sensitized by the media not much for their social commitment rather more for their business commitments, the evidences are “if some media really want to save and do good for the victim, it would rather not show the faces of the entire family and not the victim alone on TV, in India it is not only the person but the family, society gets victimized for any crime related issues. Will I not find the girl who was victimized if I knew her sister or parents or friends? And they are showed on TV, so point number one the media is bad as of now, and let us not simply be driven by these corporate, business oriented media and anchors.

If the activist groups claim to be needing the freedoms as in Europe, you first have to understand what the situation there is, You are really given the expectations that you expect, the so called freedom, but right there the cultural context is so different, pre-marital sex is not seen as a crime, people are accepted if you have sex till you are safe, relationships are tangible, women and men are ready to accept if their partner has previous sex experience. Would our Indian families, women, girls accept it? The answer of the majority will be ‘NO’, in one way a guy or a girl gets a lot of scope to satisfy their sexual thirst, which cannot be ruled out as psychological disability.

Ok next People want punishments as in Arab, with my little knowledge, the punishments are very harsh but to earn that the women there have to suffer more than imaginations. If you see the punishments in Arab are so strict it is also because of its culture, women are mandated to wear ‘Pardha’, are mandated to fully cover their body. Women and men are not allowed to speak unless you are a blood relative or the husband of the girl. In the case of implementing those legislation, can we also implement same restrictions on our women? It’s too hard so are the punishments hard.

OK, even if we implement such strict laws, is it of a major use? I doubt it.  Because it would be unfair and not so wise trying to eradicate an issue which is primarily morality based.

People calls out for justice but what they really mean is Revenge in the name of Justice, Justice if you  ask any parent, friends, siblings, partners, anyone who is really emotionally related to a rape victim they would define it as “ it shall not repeat for anyone in the future and not merely punishing or killing the victimizer”.

Will chemical castration eradicate it, it will create more unrest, and only the middle class and money less people gets under this, a powerful rich person can anyway turn the medical reports of a rape with his money and hence it can only be targeted to turn down money less offenders, in that case too it is not justice if it is not just for everyone. So point two is let us not be overtly ferocious about new laws rather try to understand more about the issues involved.

Third point is about culture, We are a very conserved society and we need to understand, some people might have moved to the so called “civilized” world but he majority of the country are still in our own tradition, so much of developmental activities, migration could only do very little in terms of casteism.

I am a firm believer in indigenous culture and its localized use. If I am living in India then I cannot behave like a European, if I do it’s like wearing winter wears in the summer at Chennai, I should be called insane. A girl cannot be wearing a short and roam around  in a village people will definitely give a weird look, be tempted because that’s not our custom, we are not used to it and no one can say develop to our standards when they come to my place. Same way all these developed urban population will definitely look so weird at a guy who wears a  lungi for a mall, simply because it is not accepted as a normal wear by the majority so one have to understand that they need to go with the majority and the sons of the soil rather than trying to impose the thoughts of the minority , already India has a rich experience in accepting the minorities views with reference caste discriminations.

Do not mistake me, I do not rule out the choice of women to dress as per their wish, once when I visited Mumbai, I was really amazed to see a girl roaming alone with a shorts, really short, and a tight T-shirt, the purest of pure men will also be tempted. She was safe roaming like that at midnight. I was happy. So I was eager to know how this could happen in India since that was the first time I ever witnessed such an incident. There was a local person; a social worker who explained me that these are very common and I may witness a lot more which I did, during the course of my stay I also saw men and women students studying late night together and also some smooching, cuddling, uncalled activities inside an educational campus. Both can happen in such a free institution. I would have loved to do the former inside an educational campus but I would also have avoided the former if the later cannot be avoided. So one must understand that freedom does not ensure safety.

I currently live in Madurai at the time of writing this blog and I also have the privilege of being in some rural places. Women cannot be seen after 9 pm on the roads, and I heard a person speaking in a tea shop, all these rapes are very high where there is lot of developments and there are lots of cultural mishaps, I was reminded about the social worker in Mumbai he told me that even in Mumbai, there are safe places for girls to roam around and there are not so safe places to roam around. I have also heard for my wonder that rapes are very less among the women of Jipsy communities and they quoted that key reason is that women have to report to the community by night and they cannot be late in night, people may criticize rights perspective but one thing I have observed is their social control technique was very much effective and also accepted by them. I am not propagating the same for all women but I urge the young women and the older women to sensitize our girls to know what is safe and unsafe and not succumbing to the ego. If there is a pit we will better not go into it, try to level the pit in a more practical perspective may be going near the pit and not inside the pit, if you do it from inside the pit you are only burying yourself. So if you wear a tight T-shirt and short midi (just for example) that’s fine but you simply cannot expect the boys not to see you or give you a look for it tempts them biologically, in that way I shall also add even saree or any dress do not guarantee you from being looked. I still remember a girl I was a friend with and one more junior of mine, two beautiful girls but knew exactly when to talk, what to wear, how to talk, how to show up. These are two girls I have always heard my friends term beautiful rather than sexy which boys generally term for any good looking girl and for a fact both of them prefer modern dresses, but the interesting fact is they knew when to wear what and how to wear what. That’s a key. They also chose their route, they way they avoid guys it would never be hurtful. So point number four is be aware of your situation, culture and act accordingly, be wise rather than brave.

I want to end with a quote of a friend “whatever may the women activist show their concern over women, rape and safety of women, none of the men there would be willing to marry a rape victim nor the women be ready to take a rape victim as their daughter-in-law or sister-in-law”.

One core thing I want to convey through this blog is not being over emotional and too quick to post your views, but to be more sensitive to the issues and issues relating to that, have an open mind to understand issues. If social activism is done to carry their social status it is of no use, if it done with heart there will be more carefulness to handling the issues.

I have not intended to hurt anyone’s feelings or views but to put forth my view and also trying to establish a mutual understanding rather than one perspective.

Your comments are highly regarded and will be discussed and if you prove me wrong I will be happier to give you a salute and accept it but you may have to earn that since I am a hard nut to crack.

Thank you for reading, do post in your views, comments, and come back sooner.

Love & Regards,

Daniel Sundar Raj.B.A.

Basically about me

வணக்கம் 

Hello everyone,

Daniel

I start my blogging for a lot of purposes , to improve my writing, to update my friends and networks, to really  spread some good news and to appreciate and comment on certain experiences but ultimately the blog's perspective is strictly mine or endorsed by me, no one shall take it offensive and if at all anything is offensive i sincerely apologize for that.

This particular blog is to give my readers a sense about myself , who i am , where i hail from and what my past was with some personal discretion.

I was born on the 14th of June, 1991 a fine morning my mom went for a regular check up walking from Saligramam to K.K.Nagar in Chennai, and the doctor told my mom about my arrival the same day, not many people at the labor ward, i was born at about 6:30 pm.

My Mobile first ever photo taken in a mobile

I was brought up amidst of a lot of socio-economical troubles, family feuds.

My brother could only hear my birth after a year or so, and there started our love , he ran away from the hostel to see me and even if i did not experience it or realise it, i can very much visualise it and wow he was just awesome.

My dad was a Advocate clerk and mom was working in an export company. we lived in Saligramam, Chennai , i feel really belonged whenever i visit that place.

First and Last

I was brought up with lots of love, lots of love from my family. I starter my education in ECI Primary and Nursery School, Dasarathapuram, Chennai - 600 093. There are lots of memories and very few people in contact. Lots of memories intact. My first girl friend was from this school, i mean a friend and she remained the only girl i talk to till i went to standard 12.

I joined in a very prestigious school, where my brother had also studied. My father was an influential parent in that school. And the school i talk about is the Corporation Boys Higher Secondary School, Nungambakkam.

just for showup

I had some of my best moments and not so best moments in the school, i was not a great student but an average student who somehow got the accolades of  a good student. I have two genuine souls remaining form that school who are still part of my everyday thinking.

I joined Madras Christian College for my graduation more so for my brother's wish and suggestion than for my liking.

And i must say this was a key decision in my life to join Madras Christian College and Social Work Undergraduation. The course and the college turned my life, taught me lots, got me people, showed me who i am, took me where i am , got my true self out. i have really cherished a lot of moments and certain experiences changed my life the way i looked at it.

Swimming

After my UG , i knew i had to do my masters and i joined the same  heaven i was for the previous three years. Now with a lot of intent, passion and ideas. I would  be lying if i say i have not enjoyed and grew as a person and a professional here. I was taken to another, got realisations very quick, lot of tough tides battled, lot of fun shared. I got a lot of friends and people that i would cherish for the times to come.

I love cricket, people and nuances of relationships, emotions, poems, creative writings, self expressions, debating, talking, eating, cooking, swimming ( being in the water i must say), long walks, breezy chats, breezy rides, memory recollection, acting, lyric writing,etc...

Since this blog is to mostly share my professional experiences, i would like to tell you all, that social work for me is not a mere profession and a source of income rather more emotional, personal, passion oriented, and with purpose to serve people with heart's contentment and not solely for personal wishes.

 Thank You for reading, I sign off for now, and i will get back sooner.

With Love & Regards,

Daniel Sundar Raj