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An interrupt is a pulse or level that is delivered to the microcontroller when a peripheral device needs servicing. The servicing is done by the software and can be as simple as receiving a character from the keyboard.
An interrupt servicing routine is a subroutine that is executed every time the microcontroller receives an interrupt from a peripheral device.
Lets assume that you wanted to read the input from the keyboard. You can poll the keyboard in a software loop until you receive an input. However, this process prevents your software from performing other tasks.
Or you can design in interrupt servicing routine that is executed only when the interrupt occurs. The interrupt is hardware driven so you don't have to worry about it when writing software. Your interrupt servicing routine will fetch the character entered and process it. When there is no interrupt your software performs it's other tasks.
Your software does not call the interrupt servicing routine. The call is taken care of by the microcontroller. Therefore, the interrupt servicing routine can be executed at any time. When the execution is complete, the control is transfered back to your program.
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