Bangalore Calling
Bangalore Calling

Author: Brinda Shekhar

Publisher: Hachette India

Published: 2012-08-07

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 9350094215

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The employees at the Callus call centre in Bangalore juggle false identities, abusive customers and the tugs of family and community. An Anglo-Indian trainer is aghast at the overt Americanisms adopted by her eager trainees. A van driver who yearns for a son petitions the god Ayyappan by playing devotional songs inside the van. A brash Jimi Hendrix-loving agent tries to change the music and stokes the driver's deep resentment. A young girl travels across the great divide between the slum she lives in and the shiny glass complex where she works as a toilet cleaner. Through fifteen linked stories Bangalore Calling explores the social costs of outsourcing ? the erosion of cultures, the displacement of vernacular languages and accents ? in a world that's not yet flat.

Multiple City
Multiple City

Author: Aditi De

Publisher: Penguin Books India

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780143100256

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Founded by the chieftain Kempe Gowda around 1537, the story of Bangalore has no grand linear narrative. The location has revealed different facets to settlers and passers-through. The city, the site of bloody battles between the British and Tipu Sultan, was once attached to the glittering court of Mysore. Later, it became a cantonment town where British troops were stationed. Over time, it morphed into a city of gardens and lakes, and the capital of PBI - Indian scientific research. More recently, it has been the hub of PBI - India's information technology boom, giving rise to Brand Bangalore, an PBI - Indian city whose name is recognized globally. Hidden beneath these layers lies a cosmopolitan city of sub-cultures, engaging artists and writers, young geeks and students. People from every corner of PBI - India and beyond now call it home. In this collection of writings about a multi-layered city, there are stories from its history, translations from Kannada literature, personal responses to the city's mindscape, portraits of special citizens, accounts of searches for lost communities and traditions, among much more. U.R. Ananthamurthy writes about Bangalore's Kannada identity; Shashi Deshpande maps the city through the places she has lived in since she was a young girl; Anita Nair draws a touching portrait of a florist who celebrates the glories of the Raj; Ramachandra Guha describes his close bond with Bangalore's most unusual bookseller; and Rajmohan Gandhi recounts the Mahatma's trysts with the city. From traditional folk ballads to a nursery rhyme about Bangalore, from poems to blogs, from reproductions of turn of the twentieth century picture postcards to cartoons, Multiple City is the portrait of a metropolis trying to retain its roots as it hurtles into the future.

Shadowlines
Shadowlines

Author: Develeena Ghosh

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2020-05-15

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1527551547

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Shadowlines: Women and Borders in Contemporary Asia explores the often ambiguous and contradictory roles of Asian women in the postcolonial world. As globalisation advances, labour mobility is transforming traditional definitions of women’s work. The commodification of female sexuality in both the international and the national marketplace generates conflicting dynamics of oppression and liberation, as do the wider possibilities of employment and migration more generally. The consequences can be enslaving or empowering, depending on context. How do the women themselves experience these changes? What are their opportunities for engagement with the wider political world which shapes these processes? In this volume, a range of eminent academics address these questions by placing the testimony of individual women within the wider discourse of postcolonialism and gender studies.

Transitions
Transitions

Author: H. C. Kim

Publisher: The Hermit Kingdom Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 92

ISBN-13: 9780972386463

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Life is all about transitions. Changes. We encounter experiences and peoples, and our life is never the same after that. In his new volume of poems, TRANSITIONS: POEMS, dedicated to three Cambridge University graduates, the poet H. C. Kim beautifully explores wonders in human experiences. Kim's artful skill as a poet is the Impressionistic way in which he is able to capture events, people, experiences, and life. The reader is guided through a life's journey as if in a cinematic experience. Poems come alive and invite the reader into the world of fantasy and poetic empathy. Kim's poems are good for reading at the beach for relaxation as well as for more intense analysis into metaphor, symbolism, and socio-cultural significance. H. C. Kim is quickly becoming not only a commentator on modern life and experiences but also a poetic muse-prophet of possibilities and hope. Those who have enjoyed his other poetry volumes, such as GOING THE DISTANCE: A POETRY COLLECTION and TOTAL DEPRAVITY: POEMS, will particularly appreciate his artful addition to "poetry-in-motion" that is quickly becoming a genre in its own right.

Outsourcing America
Outsourcing America

Author: Ron Hira

Publisher: AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn

Published: 2008-04-30

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0814416284

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One of the most controversial topics in the news is the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries. Outsourced jobs have extended well beyond the manufacturing sector to include white-collar professionals, particularly in information technology, financial services, and customer service. Outsourcing America reveals just how much outsourcing is taking place, what its impact has been and will continue to be, and what can be done about the loss of jobs. More than an exposé, Outsourcing America shows how offshoring is part of the historical economic shift toward globalism and free trade, and demonstrates its impact on individual lives and communities. In addition, the book now features a new chapter on immigration policies and outsourcing, and advice on how individuals can avoid becoming victims of outsourcing. The authors discuss policies that countries like India and China use to attract U.S. industries, and they offer frank recommendations that business and political leaders must consider in order to confront this crisis—and bring more high-paying jobs back to the U.S.A.

Answer the Call
Answer the Call

Author: Aimee Carrillo Rowe

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2013-12-01

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1452940398

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What happens over time to Indians who spend their working hours answering phone calls from Americans—and acting like Americans themselves? To find out, the authors of Answer the Call conducted long-term interviews with forty-five agents, trainers, managers, and CEOs at call centers in Bangalore and Mumbai from 2003 to 2012. For nine or ten hours every day, workers in call centers are not quite in India or America but rather in a state of “virtual migration.” Encouraged to steep themselves in American culture from afar, over time the agents come to internalize and indeed perform Americanness for Americans—and for each other. Call center agents “migrate” through time and through the virtual spaces generated by voice and information sharing. Drawing from their rich interviews, the authors show that the virtual migration agents undergo has no geographically distant point of arrival, yet their perception of moving is not merely abstract. Over the duration of the job, agents’ sense of place and time changes: agents migrate but still remain, leaving them somewhere in between—between India and America, experience and imagination, class mobility and consumption, tradition and modernity, here and there, then and now, past and future. However tangible and elastic their virtual mobility might seem in these relatively lucrative jobs, it is also suspended within the confines of the very boundaries they migrate across. Having engaged with these vivid and often poignant interviews, readers will never again be indifferent to an Indian agent’s greeting at the other end of a toll-free call: “Hello, my name is Roxanne. How may I help you?”