John P. Matthew
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| 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.
You can contact him at: zenwriter[AT]gmail[DOT]com