Call Centre

Talking of defunct technology, our ten year old second computer has been on its way out for a while. I'm ordering a replacement which will be sent from Ireland but the call centre is in India. While I'm on the phone at one stage I e-mail the salesman:

'What is “Wild Yorkshire”?' he asks, reading the link below my signature on the message.

'It's my website; if you're on the internet you could follow the link.'

'I'm reading “Welcome to the Wilder Side of the County”', he says when he gets to the home page, 'I can see a picture of a grey man; is this you?'

'What is “Gold in the Eye”?', he asks, looking at a link to a recent diary page.

'Well, I'm a writer and sometimes I don't write in a, er, factual way. I've forgotten what that one was about . . . oh yes, it was a frog: a frog has a golden eye. It's the way I write.'

'I am reading your words and it makes me feel peaceful - who did the drawings?'

Soon his supervisor asks to speak to me, she tells me that in six months of operating the call centre I am the first customer they have actually seen a photograph of. I hope it isn't too much of a shock for them.

Hyderabad

They're based in Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh state, southern India, on the Deccan Plateau. According to Encyclopedia Britannica Hyderabad has one of the best universities in India, it's a centre for the arts, has an old city (left, photograph from Britannica), a zoo, parks and - I think this is where I would head to first, if I should ever visit the city - 'a mile-long bund (embankment) on the Husain Sagar Lake' which 'serves as a promenade and is the pride of the city.'

Sounds like a place I'd like to visit with my sketchbook.

Related Link

Under the Firestar a illustrated journal by Nancy Ghandi who is based in Bombay (but is writing from Chennai at the moment). I must thank Nancy for the title of the Sushi Sketchbook which I drew in Scarborough; she had quoted Matthew Arnold's poem On Dover Beach (and the parody by Anthony Hetch On Dover Bitch) in her diary and the phrase 'This distant northern sea' seemed the perfect title.

Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk