One night at the call center. CHARACTERS IN A NUTSHELL

‘One night at the call center’ by Chetan Bhagat is a story about the lives of six people working in a call center searching for true happiness. Beginning with a messed-up love story of the narrator “Shyam”, to the separated family life of the retired military person, we can see different short stories of each individual fighting to get peace. In the midst of their complexities they work together at the “Connextions” call center under the Manager Subhash Bakshi who acts like a villain in the story. Towards the end of the book we can see how “God” comes to rescue each one of them which leads into a major transformation of everyone’s life. We also see the downfall of Mr. Bakshi, who is taught a lesson by his agents whom he considered ‘good for nothing’ and exploited them.
First of all the author introduces us to Shaym(Shyam Mehra)– the narrator and the most important character of the book who is the hero of the book alongwith his close friend Vroom. For Shyam, Priyanka who was his girlfriend as well as a colleague is the most important person in the whole story. Throughout the novel we see Shyam narrating his past dates with Priyanka with whom he has had a break up. He is a person who lacks self-confidence and therefore he is unable to achieve his girlfriend as well as a good position at his work place. He is extremely talented and efficient. Towards the end we see how he transforms himself into a completely new person and achieves whatever he wants in his life.
On the other hand we see Priyanka- an intelligent and a practical girl who is too pre-occupied with her mother who was an extremely important person to her. For her mother’s sake she had decided to break up with her boyfriend Shyam and marry NRI Ganesh. However, things turn out to be different in the end and Priyanka chooses her love over her mother’s wishes for the sake of her own happiness.
The third character is Vroom (Varun Malhotra) who loves speed and wheels. He stays with his mother who has separated from his father who was a businessman. He is the most carefree person in the book. He has a soft corner for his colleague Esha, but she has never taken him seriously till now it seems. He is a very good friend of Shyam and helps him to get back with Priyanka.Vroom is the one who saves “Connextions” call center from a major problem using his skills. In the end he gets along with Shyam and starts his own web based company.
The fourth character is Esha Singh who wants to become a model. She was pretty and had been struggling quite hard to get modeling assignments but perhaps her short height is a barrier (obstacle/wall) for her choice of career. She had slept with a Designer once, to get an offer, who turned out to be a cheat. Since that incident she had formed a guilt within her which was one of the reasons of her not accepting Vroom’s proposal. In the end she decides to give up her dream to become a model and continued to work at the call center.
The fifth character is Rahika Jha, who stays with her husband and in-laws. She had married her husband against her parents’ wishes and had transformed herself completely in order to adjust herself into an orthodox family. She had been working very hard to mange her house and work. Unfortunately she finds out her husband’s affair with another woman and decides to give him a divorce. In the end she quits her husband’s family and goes to live with Esha.
Lastly we have the character of Military Uncle who stays alone, away from his son and grandson since they got separated from him and left for the US. He works at the call center to earn some extra money apart from the pension that he gets. He had some misunderstanding with his Son and daughter-in-law but in the end he realizes his mistake and decides to apologize and go back to them.

Hence the book ‘One night at the call center’ in one way or the other relates to every human being who is so busy in the worldly pleasures that he doesn’t have time to think about himself on his own. He looks for the solution of his problems outside whereas the truth is that it lies within himself.