I began the journey for 1-888-Dial-India a long time ago when I was struck by 3 things. 1) That I've always wanted to write a play set in an office and 2) I have always wanted to write a play about outsourcing and 3) I've always wanted to write a play featuring my friend Kunaal Roy Kapur, the director of President Is Coming.
This is not because he is talented (he is not). It is because he cut so many of my lines in President, it only seemed fitting to write a whole bunch for him and request him to say it.
Outsourcing is interesting because it combines all the things I love about the world. Half-baked knowledge of different cultures, aspirational western business milieu, fake pomp and gibberish that passes for corporate speak. In short, a remixing of the English language for uniform globalization. Like the Anne Taylor of language. And to top it all off, it fuels my other favorite subject, New India
A generation of India is now deriving a new way of life with business and occupations that didn't exist 10 years ago. It's fueling a slow social and economic revolution, less velvet, more neon. These people, 700 million of them, will carve a way of life far more distinct than the British or the Mughals or the Rajputs or the Dravidians before them and we will seep into it because it won't involve bloodshed but buying. More and more consumer stuff. This India is what will remain and it especially intrigues me because it is going to the core of 4000
