Parul Sharma’s book By the Water Cooler follows Mini Shukla and the secondary heroine Tanya as they try to reconcile themselves to the fact that their new job isn’t what they thought it would be. Cowering under the tyrannical CEO and his smarmy sidekick, and struggling to cope under her immediate boss Shipra, Mini tries desperately to handle the Azura project.
But Shipra, the quintessential bully, does nothing to help Mini, even when she offers to assist her and ends up humiliating her. In fact, she goes out of her way to make sure that the new recruit fails her project. Shipra, it seems, has taken a vehement dislike to Mini, her work, her questions, and even Mini’s supposed visits to the restroom. To top it all, she is convinced Mini is out to steal Varun, the designer — and flies into possessive jealous plotting.
Mini, on the other hand, is struggling hard to control her sanity. Her friend Tanya is banished to a cubicle by the kitchen downstairs and is slowly showing signs of derangement as she plans for her wedding. Varun, whom she’d been interested in at first, is lying about his theatre-performing girlfriend. Shipra is in a bad mood as she always is, and then Avinash, the company’s CEO, showers her with offensive and strange names. Besides, when a certain model agrees to pose for Mini’s project with Azura magazine and demands a certain rate, Mini agrees because Shipra said so. And then the poor hapless heroine of By the Water Cooler has her head bitten off by Avinash who refuses to pay.
By the Water Cooler is an amusing and true to life account of the travails of office life, and Mini, although young, bold and intelligent, often finds herself at the receiving end of petty vengeance and harsh words. More than once the cheerful young woman is made to feel worthless and unintelligent, and more than once the thought of quitting crosses her mind. Stress, obstacles and bad tempers mar her project. Life in that office is particularly loony. Mini is an interesting character, so is the madcap Tanya, her best friend. Shipra, the grudging, ill-tempered, ill-mannered and infuriating boss is very well portrayed, so is the loud-mouthed Avinash. Characters in the book feel alive, they are unique in their own ways and they are realistic. The presence of a definitive plot as against mere piling of event after event gives the book an easy readability.
There are moments, however, when the humour in the narrative is forced, and attempts at the amusing turn rather lame. Some descriptions are decidedly jumbled — “…the face had a set of perfect white teeth shining in it, and was framed by a bunch of tight, black curls…”, — perhaps better editing could have helped. The flow of the narrative, however, does improve as the book progresses.
By the Water Cooler is a fun read. A few improvements especially where descriptions are concerned, though, would have helped.
— suryakantham3@yahoo.com
