ABSTRACT
This chapter has as its point of departure Chetan Bhagat’s novel One Night @ the Call Center, which concerns itself with the economics and politics of outsourcing and unfolds predominantly in Gurgaon, a satellite township of India’s capital. Gurgaon is one of the most important offshoring centres in the world and is often showcased as the perfect illustration of a bold new India. But in Bhagat’s hands, it is more. In the novel, Gurgaon is the sacred site upon which God descends by means of the protagonist’s cellular phone to intervene in the affairs of men. At the heart of the novel is a near-death experience for the six central characters, and God reaches out to save the young call centre employees. In his disembodied avatar, God speaks to all the characters almost like a self-help guidance counsellor, communicating in an idiom literally no different from the language the young digital denizens speak. What can be seen here is the coming together of a strong telematic network of exchanges and controls which constitutes in many urban Indian contexts the field of realities through which religion is now instantiated and made the animating force of a new, increasingly powerful Hindu India.
