This time when Gautam and I had talked, it was two weeks since our last conversation. He said wanted to meet me and literally begged me to come to Connaught Place at five in the evening. I didnt feel like refusing so earnest a request though I had listened to enough of his stories to last me a lifetime but I too was curious and decided to meet the chap, some six months into our acquaintance!

Gautam, said he will be wearing black trousers, a blue half- sleeved shirt, Nike shoes, and will be carrying a gray duffel bag. He reminded me that he was around five feet five inches and weighed around sixty kilos, had a wheatish complexion, there was a mole on his face and that he had a crew cut a day before.

Gautam, was from Patna, twenty two years old, a commerce graduate, once totally enamored by the call center industry. His job as a calling agent was that dream gone awry. He landed up with a domestic call center company for a local mobile telephony service provider. His make- shift office was situated in the basement of a busy crowded commercial office complex. The pick-up and drop consisted of an old Suzuki van rented on monthly basis, from a private owner. The office was air-cooled. His salary was Rs. 6,000. Within two months of joining this place he was thinking of changing the firm.

His job was to call up people and tell them about the latest schemes of the company. After some frustrating months at the job he increasingly disliked, Gautam began using his work hours for advise and consolation. He would often call up unsuspecting people and tell them about his condition and solicit their take on it. And once he called me and then continued. Sometimes I think I should not have givin him that patient a hearing but then perhaps there was no one else he knew in the city. So, I became his friend, philosopher nad guide - a role I am now too willing to shed! But I feel gulity too for on a routine barging of calls by the Quality Control Analyst, he was caught and his contract was terminated immediately. He is now looking for a new job but not with a call centre.