India, Aug. 30 -- One picks up Not Safe for Work, expecting a familiar office romance: two attractive people, professional hostility and proximity doing its inevitable work. Though author Radhika Agrawal does give us all of that, somewhere between a stolen bite of vegetable uttapam and a late-night brainstorming session, one realises that the more interesting love story isn't between Kavya Mehra and Neil Desai. It's between Kavya and Mumbai. Spotlight on Kavya, a senior graphic designer, who has spent three-and-a-half years regarding the city as an adversary: expensive, exhausting, indifferent. Mussoorie is home, and Mumbai is the price she pays for her ambition. Neil, her privileged intern, arrives with an insouciant air. When he discovers her professional lie, their equation tilts: the woman who is technically his senior now has something to fear from him. Agrawal is at her best when she lets the romance germinate in the banalities of working life. A favourite detail is their '404' code: Kavya whispers it at Tanya's desk, and she shuts her laptop without asking questions. Minutes later, Tanya is stealing Kavya's uttapam while declaring Neil hot. It's a small, perfectly observed piece of office life. Neil, too, is more deftly drawn than his privileged-boy exterior suggests. His calling Rajat 'uncle', his ease at work, his attempts to prove himself to his father: these prise open the armour of the charming man-child. But it's Mumbai that steals the pages. Locals, monsoon, Marine Drive, traffic and cramped commutes define how the city begins as a millstone and ends as an accomplice. And Neil does not merely make Kavya fall for him; he teaches her to see life through a different lens. The book is not without its familiar rom-com machinery, however, and one occasionally wishes Agrawal would trust silence as much as banter. Yet her conversational prose has an unstudied warmth, and her Bollywood-inflected humour keeps the narrative nimble. While still a workplace romance, Not Safe for Work is more about the dangerous business of allowing a place, a person, even a version of yourself, to become home. And Mumbai, by the final page, feels less like a city than a seduction. Title: Not Safe For Work Author: Radhika Agrawal Publisher: HarperCollins India Price: Rs.350...