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View video: Why I Wrote "Mr. Bandookwala, M.B.A., Harvard"

About Me


John P. Matthew


John P. Matthew at the local Cafe Coffee Day in CBD Belapur, caught in a pensive mood.


Award-winning short story writer, poet, artist, singer-songwriter, John P. Matthew, though born in Kerala, lives and writes from Bombay. His short stories have won the Penguin-Sulekha “India Smiles” contest and the Grey Oaks “Bright Lights” contest and have been anthologised. Recently, he completed a set of short stories about migrants from Bangla Desh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal living and working in India, a series about the migrant experience. His stories are rooted in the Indian soil and are about broken lives caught in extraordinary situations, which emerge from epiphanic narratives that emerge from natural conversations. A polyglot, who believes in talking to people in their own languages, however flawed it may be, and uses this skill to understand people and write their stories. Till now, he has written around fifty short stories. He can read, write, and speak four Indian languages, in addition to his working language, English. As a poet he explores themes outside the self-obsessed poetry of today. His latest poem titled, “Meet Mr. John Nobody” was described as a “Brilliant poetic effort,” in the forum Caferati by an independent reviewer.

He has had a varied background in his writing life. He was a publishing executive, editor of the monthly magazine Ambit, sub-editor and feature writer of the fortnightly Capital Market, writer for the business news portal Domain-b.com, content writer for software company Atlogix, and copywriter for real estate companies: Akruti, Mantri Realty, and Unity Infraprojects. Besides, he has varied experience in marketing including: public relations, website creation, managing marketing events, advertising, digital advertising, and social media. He is an early convert to social media and has a reasonably good following on Facebook and Twitter.

His first novel Mr. Bandookwala, M.B.A., Harvard, is about the mystery of how Indians are very successful in foreign countries but fail in their own. Bandookwala is a techie (software programmer) and is the inventor of the fictional social media Facespook, who fails miserably in his avatar as the marketing chief of an Indian realty company.

His poems have been published by the periodicals Poetry Rivals and Glomag. He writes and composes songs and plays the acoustic guitar. He lives in New Bombay with his wife and son.

You can contact him at: zenwriter[AT]gmail[DOT]com