Arjun Raina, a playwright, Shakespearean actor, and Indian classical dancer is coming to UMB on October 14 to perform his one-person show “A Terrible Beauty is Born.” Raina will play both a male call center operator in India and an elderly woman in the United States. UMB English Professor Rajini Srikanth says the play is an “Exploration of a human connection between two people in the context of a global phenomenon.”
For those who are not familiar with call centers, think of telemarketers or the endless phone calls debtors receive. Many of these calls are made from outside the United States.
According to www.help-desk-software.net/glossary.html, a call center is defined as “A hub where calls are placed or received for the purposes of telemarketing, sales, customer support, or other business related activity” and “may contain a few or hundreds of agents who handle calls to relay business information.”
“India is a big call center location,” commented Srikanth. American and European multi-national companies relocate call centers to countries like India where labor is cheaper. According to one report, “Industry wages, although decent by Indian standards, are not enough to support a family. Starting salaries are from 8,000 to 12,000 rupees a month or between $175 and $265 a month at current conversion rates.”
In addition to these thin wages, Srikanth explained, Indian call center operators are experiencing “cultural schizophrenia.” Natives of India must undergo an Americanization process in order to place phone calls to American families. They are given American names, voice lessons, and are even educated with American television shows, so as to give the customer the feeling that they are speaking to an American.
Srikanth stated, “It is particularly interesting that Arjun enters a very complicated economic picture.” Raina has worked as a call center trainer and saw first-hand what was happening to call center employees. According to an article written by Amitabh Pal, Raina was “inspired to do the play after learning of a call center employee with an assumed name who committed suicide”,
Raina commented about the Westernization of Indian names in Pal’s article, stating, “Here, the worker has no choice. When you’re faking the name, you’re making invisible the country, and the labor force is functioning as an invisible labor force. They are Indian by day and American by night.”
In “A Terrible Beauty is Born,” Raina plays the role as the call center operator from a credit card company looking for money from unpaid bills. The woman he portrays is on the other end of the line (and globe) and has a daughter who has been lost since the September 11 attacks. The daughter is in possession of the credit card, which is why the bill has not been paid. The woman proceeds to ask the caller if she can trace her daughter’s whereabouts-if the credit card is used again, the woman will know she is alive.
However, the call center operator is not trained to handle this situation. After all, the woman is oblivious to where he is located and he is trained only to ask the woman why the bill has not been paid.
Arjun Raina will be performing “A Terrible Beauty is Born” on Thursday October 14 in the Snowden Auditorium (First Floor, Wheatley Hall) from 4:30-6:00 p.m. A Q&A and reception is scheduled to follow the performance. The event is sponsored by the Creative Writing Program, The English Department, the Performing Arts and Theater Departments, the First Year Seminar, and the University Honors Program.