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Night shift again.
One hundred calls logged,
Fifty complaints received,
Ten resolved, forty pending
Until tomorrow's shift.
Excels mailed to the supervisor.
By ten p.m., the coffee
Arrives to keep the workers
Awake and alert through the
Still of the night.
Two a.m, two hours before the shift
Ends, an irate caller from
Nottingham, UK, screams
Bloody Indians, Bloody Indians
You're stealing our jobs
Bloody Indians
The worker holds the phone
Helplessly, yes sir, sorry sir,
Can I help you with anything else
Sir, have a good day sir,
Here is your complaint number
Sir.
Three a.m. caller from Sydney
G'day mate, can you send me
My statement? Credit card number
5674-8765-8900-7623.
Call takes 4 minutes only.
That's a record.
Phones keep ringing past 4 a.m.,
But the shift is over and
She shuts down the computer
In relief, packs her handbag,
Swipes out and walks to the
Parking lot.
She revs up her Scooty in the dark
The headlights shine on the tar
And she is on the road home.
Hands-free mobile rings; she starts
Talking, talks so intently that
She does not see the truck
Speeding out from an alleyway
Head on until it is too late
To turn, to escape the wheels
Bearing down on her, crushing
Her bones, knocking the mobile
Into a drain and leaving her
Speechless.
Five a.m she is rushed to the hospital.
Five-thirty a.m, she stops breathing.
Time of death: five forty-seven a.m.,
July 12, 2007. Cause of death:
Multiple injuries, punctured lungs
And internal bleeding.
This poem is based on a newspaper story about a call-center employee who was killed in an accident on her way home late one night, just last week. A lot of young people in Bangalore seem to be losing their lives in these kinds of traffic accidents lately. It struck me as tragic, and I wanted to write about it.
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