John & Jane

Six male and female characters and a Bombay call centre. At night, they answer American toll-free calls: credit cards, insurance products and miracle products. Their accent must be perfect… hence the English lessons with sales brochures as course books. Profitability must be maximum… so the fourteen-hour shifts are managed by a finely-tuned hierarchy of teams. Daytime is for sleeping either in lodging houses or at parents’ houses. “Osmond” becomes Oaref once again. What he dreams of is the Eldorado shown in pictures: “Everyone who’s ever gone to America gets rich.” Blond down to the eyelashes, Namrata (“Naomi”) speaks with a kind of cyborg-Midwest accent. “I’m totally very Americanized”, she asserts. Today’s Bombay with its malls and New Age trends seems to give substance to their American dream. Their identity is caught between real and virtual worlds. It seems to be slowly dissolving in the nauseous setting of global prosperity, in which they too are hoping to find their place.