>By the Water Cooler by Parul Sharma

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Mini and Tanya have let go of their jobs in an ad agency and have joined JR enterprises to take their careers to the next level.Little do they know that they have inadvertently stepped into a madhouse with a megalomaniac CEO at the helm. To make matters worse Mini’s boss, Shipra turns out to be a bitch who wants nothing more than getting Mini out of her face. Tanya gets relegated to the basement to give the food guys company and decides to focus on her marriage to her boyfriend,Prithvi. Meanwhile,Mini has her eye on the hot designer,Varun. Add a bumbling secretary who fancies herself as a detective and an oily personal assistant with a “secret”, you have the necessary fodder for a joy-ride. Mini gets assigned as a Brand manager for JRE’s brand, Angel and is entrusted with getting a photo-shoot done. The rest of the story is about how she tackles the photo-shoot which is fraught with problems and avoids Shipra’s attempts at wrecking her career.

Parul’s strength is ability to conjure up believable, warm characters.I quite liked the somewhat “batty” secretary, Mumtaz who dives headlong into investigating shady happenings at the office and the yummy–sounding Rohan Vaidya, the “old” photographer.The narrative is breezy and fast-paced: A true-blue chicklit.The book takes a while to warm up, but gets funny once it warms up ,making you chuckle once every few pages. The humor is not the back-thumping slapstick type, but the self-deprecating variety. Sometimes,the characters used words like “Gah” and “Harrumph” and that didn’t sound too believable considering that its a book about Indian people. But otherwise, Parul has managed to retain the Indian flavor.

With a lot of workplace stories being published these days, Parul’s book is a sweet, fresh book that will definitely work with women. Don’t pay too much attention to the plot and read the book just for the chuckles.

Let me throw in a teaser of Parul’s writing …

“Shipra barged in her usual delicate fashion of a large truck brimming over with construction materials.”

Funny, right?.Well, the book is studded with such gems. Not to mention deeply philosophical observations like “Corporate bitches are made, not born.”

Overall, it’s a feel-good,fun book, where even some of the evil guys even seem like caricatures. Most characters will remind you of someone you would know from your own workplaces.I would rate it 3/5.

A big thanks to Manish from Friends of books for sending me the copy to review.

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