I fully and completely refuse to Be subjected to services provided by Indian people. the bad thing is American people Have become lazy so they subcontract these companies from overseas to answer telephones when they should be paying Americans who need jobs to answer phones.I make a phone call The Indian operator answers. And I would hang up on his a**. I don't have to be subjected to a person who is supposed to know how to speak English answering a telephone for company that is supposed to have American English speaking answering services and get the Indian version can't even make a decent Sentence, much less be able to understand anything that I have to say about anything that I need to contact the company about.My suggestion is start boycotting anything that has to do with any company that wants to use an Indian operator because I absolutely refuse to speak to most companies and I will boycott till the end of my days.

Like many good science – fiction stories, John & Jane suggest that the willing suspension of disbelief occurs not when we enter the realm of fantasy but rather the moment we awake to reality. What distinguishes John & Jane, however, is that it is not a fiction, but a documentary. Set primarily in India's 24- hour call centers servicing US customers, the movie, shot on 35mm film, is a potent blend of dramatic, stylized cinematography and humanist reportage.The movie begins with a dreamlike tracking sequence through the neon excess of Times Square, New York, only to snap back to homely Mumbai and the shouts of mother haranguing her grown- up son to get out of bed. Director Ashim Ahluwalia focuses on six workers – a "team" in professional jargon – who embody contrasting attitudes and philosophies towards their chosen profession.Each worker is required to assume an American alias, at times jarringly inconsistent with his or her actual personality. Glen is a defiant, pot – smoking malcontent who plans to "get into something that I really like doing, modeling for Versace or Gucci. " Waifish vamp Sydney asserts himself only when directing friends in a local dance group. Ambitious dreamer Osmand admires tarnished kitsch icons Elvis Presley and Engelbert Humperdinck because they are self - made billionaires – as he says this, the camera wickedly tightens on the hideous mustache gracing an exposed Humperdinck cassette cover. Self – possessed angel of mercy Nikki Cooper excels at connecting with clients across impossible distances. Frumpy, Nicholas kills time at sterile shopping arcades so he can spend 20 minutes sharing a McDonald's happy meal with his wife, who works a different shift at another center. Naturally blonde, Naomi professes she is "very Americanized" in mawkish, over – affected American Midwestern accent.Ahluwalia intersperses these video portraits, which follow the characters' daily routines, with static shots of antiseptic call center interiors or aerial views of Mumbai itself bristling with traffic. Giving viewers just enough insight to assess the film's subjects, he refrains from judging their motivations or their line of work.Instead, delicate, ghostly dramas emerge from cross – temporal, trans- cultural exchanges. Sydney recounts how people enquire, "What's the whether like … is it raining? It's showing here. "What about you?" A reclusive, aging man in Texas, responding to solicitations for a new long distance plan, states that he never phones anybody – he'd rather " it just stayed just like it is." Another woman calls to report domestic abuse and seems non-plussed when told she has the wrong number. These fleeting episodes speak to communal isolation, as though the call center's lonely night – watchmen are equally matched by solitary souls confined to suburban wastelands.The team members' responses to their odd situation reveals as much about the universal human condition as it does about any specific local context. Nikki, a born- again Christian who embraces her job, is genuinely at peace. She turns a guest house she inherited from an aunt into an informal commune for friends and colleagues. Osmand, who reads books with titles such as The Magic of Believing, comforts himself with the taped mantra. "You deserve prosperity. Prosperity is your birthright." Naomi turns to the pulsing anonymity of discotheques, confident that blondes attract blondes.Offering an uncommon glimpse of modernizing India, John & Jane is also a stark reflection of America's projected image. Call center staff must take cultural education seminars to drill their American accents and internalize values such as individualism achievement and patriotism. They must understand the luxury of choice that Americans relish. Another scene finds the class watching reels of boy – wonder President John F. Kennedy.John & Jane tiptoes through a taut mix of nationalist industrial agenda, cultural imperialism and colonial vestige. Some workers are enamored of their privileged access to American life. Glen launches a tirade against the unseen executives growing wealthy off his outsourced labor, expressing the accrued frustration others might feel about global capitalism. His weary mother has a more pragmatic understanding of the system, responding, "If you don't like it, leave it and go somewhere else …. If they were doing what are you doing, why would they open a call center here, and why would you get a job? Then tell your Indians to give you a job!"Ultimately, there is no coup de grace, no razor's edge to peel back the skin of one reality to reveal an underlying truth. If anything, Ahluwalia's open-ended film implies that subsistence itself is a struggle fraught with ethical and existential dilemmas. Salvation, whether through self – realization or material comfort, is a lonely road to travel.Review by Andrew Maerkle

I got to grab the last two tickets to a sold-out show of "John & Jane" at the Toronto Film Festival. This film is absolutely brilliant! At first, you aren't sure what the film IS really about...yes, of course, we are told it is a documentary about Indians who work at night answering American 1-800 calls, but beyond that you keep asking yourself "what is the point? where is this heading?" - some people I spoke to just didn't get it at all and felt "let down" by the lack of a conventional structure or storyline…which is EXACTLY what I'm getting to… About 30 minutes into the film, after you have spent time with two call centre workers who (understandably) hate their jobs, you get a character who goes by the telephone alias "Osmond" - he tells you that, in fact, he quite likes the job and is on his way to becoming a billionaire! Osmond is followed by a mysterious girl called "Niki Cooper" who loves the job even more than he does, explaining that the call centre is like her family and that she loves all her callers! This film f**ks with your head… Slowly, a picture of transformation emerges. No, there is no straight story line here, but each character builds on the character that precedes it…until you arrive at the near-cyborg "Naomi" – who looks American but is clearly Indian. Her face is bleached white and hair is synthetic blond. Yes, then the "story" is clear as day – the Indian has "become" a sort of virtual American, physically, mentally and emotionally! Mind you, this is not science fiction or fantasy. It is a "documentary" although the film subtly destroys many documentary conventions. It is actually a piece of experimental film-making in the guise of a pop-doc, which is why viewers looking for a film on outsourcing may be disappointed. "John & Jane" uses outsourcing issue as a way to bring viewers in – but the film is clearly about the idea of "America" as a utopia for so many people in the world.If you are looking for a straight-up BBC film on call centres, STAY AWAY. On the other hand, if you have an open mind and are adventurous about new kinds of film-making, "John & Jane" may be just the thing for you.

'John & Jane' is a documentary about the outsourcing of telephone soliciting jobs to India, which has a large pool of underemployed young people who speak good English. Now it's not exactly big news in North America that telephone soliciting is a hateful job -- a traditional bottom-of-the-barrel for students needing extra money and those without marketable skills or work-history. Given this, the director of 'John & Jane' needs to make some further point, uniquely relevant to his culture, and I think he fails to do this.There is a good case to be made for the opinion that phone-soliciting is innately useless, and long sequences of perky young Indian girls pestering lonely old Texans with cheap long-distance phone plans might have made it. There is a case to be made for the soul-desiccating quality of the work, or for the inherent dishonesty of the companies who employ these young people, for the huge gap between the aspirations they arouse and the rewards they grant. There are good points to be made with the materials in this movie, and the director probably thought of them all, but frankly, he didn't make any of them with any conviction.The reason for this is, I think, mostly artistic, though perhaps diffuse and contradictory attitudes are behind the artistic failure. If the director had had a coherent point-of-view or a strong opinion, he might have edited the sequences of his various characters to some effect. As it is, they come in random order, and build toward no climax or point. Why would you put the sequence featuring the most rebellious, anarchic, foul-mouthed and colourful characters first? Why does the sequence with the self-deluded would-be billionaire come where it does? Why is the hopeful and naive religious girl placed where she is? The sequences -- the word is a misnomer -- have no sequence, no direction, and hence the points that might have been made are lost.Timing is also a problem, and this too is a problem of editing the material. The individual sequences go on too long. Tightly edited, this documentary would not remotely approach feature-film length. It could be edited to the forty-or-so minutes of a TV hour, and be very much better, artistically, for the cuts.It is possible that we saw a work-in-progress at Toronto Film Festival. I hope so, but I don't see this as a feature documentary, but as a TV hour, and a worthy one, if properly edited.