Loony Tunes

This is the part of the story where I'd interview Taj Tunes singers, ask them how they feel while making calls, and capture them in action. But Hui has inspired me: I can just outsource the reporting, the writing, everything.

I contact Get Friday, Hui's preferred remote executive-assistance firm, and am assigned a friendly girl named Rashi. "I thank you for assigning me this task," she quickly writes, after I e-mail her marching orders. Three days later, she files her report, which reads in part:

There are many singers associated with Tajtunes.com in India. Some of these singers are Revathi, Prince, Anukool, Preetha, Parimala, Suresh, and many more. Revathi has been with TajTunes for the past eight months [and] expresses her joy and contentment in working with TajTunes. She tells us about her experience when she initially stepped into the TajTunes group. She says, "I was initially very nervous and completely terrified of actually having to sing to people over the phone. My seniors encouraged me a lot. My Team Lead Suresh was very supportive and encouraging. He told me that I was doing fine and that I should sing as I would sing to a friend."

Another drop in the now fast-growing pond of Tajtunes.com is Anukool, who was the first singer of Tajtunes.com. His hobbies are Reading, playing cricket, and browsing through the computer. He says, "The way I feel when people ask me to repeat a song so that they may record it or make their family hear it as well is a feeling which is indescribable. Hearing the people's shouts of joy and excitement makes me feel on top of the world."

Sending me to Bangalore to obtain the same information would have cost about $3,000. Having Rashi do it ran $47.50. (She even took these photos of Anukool) Total savings for Boston magazine: $2,952.50. I am so getting outsourced.

Ba-da-ba-da-ba-da!

When the Boston Globe last year sent 50 circulation, advertising, and financial jobs to Bangalore, workers here freaked. "It's the Boston Globe, not the Bangalore Globe!" cried the Boston Newspaper Guild in an ad it placed in the Herald. In an instance like this, when jobs are lost to the lowest bidder, there is only one person to be angry at: the suit at the top, who balances profits with people and sides with the former. But that bastard is hidden behind oak doors and frosted windows, inaccessible to the rest of us. And so the face of outsourcing, the face of the enemy, becomes some poor guy at, say, Dell, who—in his quest for a stable job in a developing country—sits awake at 5 a.m. and calms disgruntled Americans who can't figure out how to plug in their printers. This is the person we resent, because this person replaced one of us.
Hui has chosen to inhabit this charged cultural crossroads, a place where phone plus India equals frustration and resentment. And he's succeeded by playing off that paradigm. Yet after laughing at Hui's earnest singer, I begin to wonder what's really driving people to buy and buy again. Yes, in part it's because Taj Tunes is supposed to be funny. But I suspect that for Americans frustrated by outsourcing, Taj Tunes' version is more than amusing. It's comforting.

Hui has harnessed a less threatening aspect of outsourcing. Globalization may send U.S. jobs overseas, but it also allows us to reach out, from across the ocean, and demand to be amused. We can say, You'll do anything? Let's see about that, like a king who may not care for the jester's jokes but loves that he can make a man a jester at all. As shameful as that sounds, and as guilty as it makes me feel, it's also a reassuring reversal of fortune. Americans hate outsourcing because it makes us feel powerless. But in a world that makes Taj Tunes possible, we haven't lost control.

I confess my thoughts to Hui, but he says I'm missing the point. "I think after we give them this good experience, both the receiver and the singer feel so good about it. Partly because the song itself is a surprise, but partly because I don't have to stick to that previous conditioning that I had before. It's ‘Oh, I can actually get something pleasurable or fun out of India.'" If that's the case, Taj Tunes is international diplomacy, a sweetening of the medicine, the first common ground on land we all occupy.

I want to believe that, but I'm having a hard time. Studies show that despite Americans' complaints about outsourcing, they don't change buying habits because of it—which means U.S. firms won't stop looking overseas for cheap help. That help increasingly includes a generation of capable, educated workers (Rashi, for one, has a bachelor's in business communication) who often settle for jobs at call centers and then seek therapy for the stress. If our two cultures can find mutual relief only in things like Taj Tunes and remote assistance, neither is really benefiting from the other.

All of which leaves me feeling conflicted about the call I laughed at. I'd laugh at an American in a lobster suit, too, but I know he's in on the joke. These singers are so sincere, I can't tell what they're thinking. I need an easy way out. On top of that, I need a concluding opinion. Rashi?

On the whole, I would say that Tajtunes.com is a very creative and innovative idea of Dave Hui. It is a service that not only brings delight to the people who listen to these songs but also gives a lot of pleasure to the people who sing these songs.

I'm feeling better already.