Vikas Swarup - Six Suspects

For the first time, the thought entered my mind that the PI might have been as crooked as a dog's hind leg. And that he may have given me a bum steer. But the Lord never closes one door without opening another one. As I was returning, I spotted a magazine called Filmfare at a bookstand with Shabnam's picture on the cover, and bought it.

Mizz Henrietta Loretta, our Third Grade teacher, taught us about a crazy dude called Archie-something who lived long, long ago in some country called Grease. The fellow dived into a bathtub and was the first to discover that water starts overflowing from a tub when you fill it too much. He got so excited he jumped out of the tub, naked as a jay bird, shouting ' Eureka! Eureka!' That's exactly what I felt like doing on reading the article about Shabnam Saxena. Coz what I discovered in that magazine was nothing short of a gold mine. It gave the whole life story of the actress and was word for word exactly the same as the story told me by that PI. My respect for Mr Gupta went up a couple of notches. The guy was right on the money. But the magazine had two additional pieces of info Mr Gupta hadn't given me. It had Shabnam's address in Mumbai and even her birthday – 17 March, which happened to be exactly the same as the birthday given to me by Sapna Singh. That was the clincher which convinced me that Sapna and Shabnam were one and the same. I felt so happy, I guzzled down four cans of Coke!

That night I sat down at the desk in my room, took out a piece of paper and began composing a letter to Shabnam. 'My dearest darling Shabnam,' I began. 'I reckon a love like ours is as scarce as hen's teeth,' and before I knew it, I'd filled twenty pages. I put them all in an envelope, marked it 'Highly Confidential', wrote Shabnam's address and posted it first thing in the morning.

The next day, I wrote another letter to Shabnam. And then it became as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. In a week's time, I'd spent more cash on postage than on food and I was down to borrowing money from Bilal.

'You better get that BPO job,' he warned me.

So on 25 October I landed up in Connaught Place for the interview in my best clothes. I was shown into a swanky office with glitzy paintings, plush leather seats and a pretty receptionist.

The person conducting the interviews was a balding guy in his forties called Bill Bakshi. He sat behind a polished steel table dressed in denim jeans, a Buffalo Bills sweatshirt and a Yankees baseball cap. He looked at me with a puzzled expression. 'Mr Larry Page… I thought you would be an Indian Christian from Goa. But you look American. Is that right?' He spoke like one of those damn Yankees from New York.

'Yeah. I'm American. Always have been. Is that a problem?'

'No… no… not at all,' he said quickly. 'In fact, what could be better for us than having an American to teach the American accent? I am assuming you are a true blue American, someone who has actually lived in the US?'

'Yeah. I'm just visiting India. I live in Waco in Texas.'

He smiled, stretched his legs and put his hands behind his head. 'I am a Buffalo Bills fan, as you can see. How about you, Larry? Are you into American football?'

'You telling me! Being from the great State of Texas, I support America 's team, the Dallas Cowboys – only team in NFL history to have won three Super Bowls in four years.'

'And what about the Houston Texans?'

'Sorry to say, but they are a shit team.'

'Why do you say that?'

'Coz they lose all their games. They had their chances in the 2004 season but the 22-14 loss to the Cleveland Browns sealed their fate. Since then the team's been pretty much in self-destruct mode. I mean the whole decision to draft Mario Williams as the number-one pick in preference to Reggie Bush or Vince Young was probably the biggest mistake in NFL draft history. The guy can't hit the broadside of a barn!'

'Wow, you seem to know the history of the NFL by heart. Do you have any previous industry experience?'

'Well, this ain't my first rodeo. I've been working with Walmart for nearly five years now.'

'Walmart? Mr Larry Page, you are hired. Welcome aboard.' He got up to shake my hand.

'Gee, thanks. But what am I supposed to do? I mean, can you tell me a little bit about your company?'

'Of course. Rai IT Solutions is a BPO company. We do many things for our overseas clients. We sell telephone services, handle consumer complaints, conduct market research, make airline bookings, compute income tax and process insurance claims. But our biggest operation is in geographic information systems. Our largest client is the ARA – American Roadside Assistance. You've heard of them?'

'Yeah. But our company vehicles have contracts with the Triple A.'

'Well, the ARA is very similar to the AAA. Now imagine yourself to be a customer of the ARA. Suppose your car breaks down or your subscription expires or you are lost on the highway.'

'Whereabouts on the highway?'

'Doesn't really matter. You can be lost in Alaska or Hawaii, for that matter. We've got all the road atlases. So what do you do when you get lost? You call a 1-800 number. That call comes to us, to our call centre in Gurgaon. And it is our customer-support associates who help out the American customer. The trick is not to let on that we are answering the call in India. The customer should think the call is being answered in America by Americans. That's where you come in.'

'Gee, to be honest, I'm not all that good at giving directions. I mean I get lost myself all the time on the I-35. Once I took just one wrong exit and ended up in New Mexico.'

'No, Larry. We are not asking you to work as a customer-support associate. We want you to be their accent trainer only. You need to teach our new call-centre employees everything about America – how Americans talk, what they play, what they eat, what they watch, so that when Deepak from Moradabad says he is Derek from Milwaukee, the caller in the US should not doubt him. Do you think you can help us do that?'

'You bet. Sounds like a piece of cake.'

'Perfect. Now see, an Indian would never use an expression like "piece of cake".' He slapped his thighs. 'A white American as our accent trainer… We've hit the bloody jackpot!' He leaned towards me. 'I hope you know that call centres in India work the graveyard shift – from eight p.m. to eight a.m. Will that be a problem?'

'Nah. I'll just sleep during the day. By the way, how much moolah will I be making on this job?'

'Well, we pay our Indian accent trainers twenty thousand rupees per month. For you we can go up to thirty thousand. Is that acceptable?'

Thirty grand! That meant I'd have enough money to go home in a month.

'When do I start?' I asked.

I began working for Rai IT Solutions the very next day, in their office complex in Gurgaon. A company van picked me up daily from Paharganj at seven p.m. and took me on an hour's drive, past the international airport, to a bustling city full of shopping malls and high-rise buildings. Gurgaon looked more like Dallas than Delhi.

The office complex was pretty impressive too. All tinted glass and marble. Inside, the call centre was just like a Walmart shop floor, a huge air-conditioned space with row upon row of cubicles with computers. There were hundreds of young Indians sitting on swivel chairs in front of the computer screens with telephone headsets on. The place hummed like a giant beehive and looked busier than a strip joint on buck night.

My job involved teaching a bunch of smart young boys and gals to speak like Americans. I started off with the brass tacks. 'There are three kinds of students,' I told the class.'One, those that learn by reading. Two, those that learn by observing. The rest have to pee on the electric fence by themselves.'

A pretty young thing in a tight little T-shirt put up her hand. 'Excuse me, Professor Page, what does peeing on an electric fence mean?'