As you know, our eviction has required us to change address recently and I needed to pass this information on to our mobile operator, the hated "we like play" network 3. I don't want to malign their excellent service, as they provide the very best in unwanted video advertising; I just have a minor quibble over the absence of a reliable signal in remote locations such as, say, central London.
Nonetheless, I called up their customer service desk and was not completely surprised to find I had connected successfully to an Indian call centre. Jasmine introduced herself to me and I said, well, hi.
Jasmine was quite helpful and then, when waiting for the database to respond to my address changing requests, asked me how my day was going. Unprepared for this eventuality, I simply told her the bare, naked truth. Untethered and out of the pen, the truth was: nothing interesting was happening and was unlikely to happen for the rest of the day. It was, to all intents and purposes, an extremely normal day. So extreme, I might have broken into a sweat just thinking about it.
I asked her about her day, the local weather, where she was. She came out and told, to my complete surprise and amazement, that she was in India. I didn't realise they could tell me that they were actually in India. Hmm.
Jasmine, it turned out, works in Mumbai and she likes to eat lots of spicy food and lots of kulfi. Apparently, she could not live without sweet food like kulfi. I imagine this is the truth. I told Jasmine I had been to Hyderabad in a previous life and I had enjoyed myself there. I told her I liked dosa, but she was more into Northern cuisine. We chatted for a while.
I hung up the call when all was said and done and thought: jeez, the so-called low-quality Indian call centre offers better service than the British mobile network they support.