The Underground Writers' Blog

A Job On The 8th Floor

2012-01-31T08:57:00.002+05:30

Dan was once stuck in a lift when a girl inside remarked: “God, it’s so claustrophobic in here.” Dan noticed how the inmates of the lift had suddenly turned to gaze at her. Actually, they were looking at the word she had just used – claustrophobic - and how it was slowly sliding into their ear passages, one syllable at a time, four syllables in all, one large and three medium. After the whole

"What I got for a Mcdonald's"

2012-01-18T23:04:00.008+05:30

Daniel Paul Carey When I was growing up I had slightly protruding front upper teeth; nothing to horrific, but bad enough for kids to occasionally chuck out a 'buck tooth' chant when they'd run out of abusive things to say about the rest of my appearance. My lower teeth also had some issues, as they seemed to be fighting to get on top of each other like a pair of wrestlers going for a pin, but

Hang on. The year is not over.

2011-12-05T23:25:00.021+05:30

“This was a good year to learn the meaning of pearly gates”, Dan Mullagathanny wondered, “So many famous people passing through them.” Some two months ago, Steve Jobs had passed through those gates and no sooner he landed in heaven than he summoned a meeting to design an iPod for God so He could listen to tribal and aborigine music. Steve had arrived there on a Monday morning so everyone was

11.11.11

2011-11-10T09:42:00.025+05:30

Dan learned that these days, to make your point believable you use several adjectives together. And so it was that he was keenly, eagerly and anxiously following the Kim-Kris affair. While the public accused them of a scam marriage, Kim insisted it is a scam divorce. “We’re still together and I do love him”, she pleaded. Some girls on Facebook believed her; others thought she was a cheat. Either

Flip Flops

2011-11-06T02:03:00.023+05:30

“Don’t wear those bathroom slippers to church.” Dan remembered being scolded by his mom on a Sunday morning. His blimming toes were scraped while playing football the evening earlier, and couldn’t fit inside his shoes without hurting. “Don’t dress like a loafer” Dan remembered his mother scolding him when he wore his torn corduroy jeans. Pants were not available readymade. They had to be

Uphold His This, Uphold His That

2011-10-08T14:34:00.028+05:30

Dan Mullagathanny was tired of listening to Steve Jobs' "Here's To The Crazy Ones". “When someone famous and successful is no more, the entire media goes full throttle with stories and anecdotes from the life of the great man”, he thought, “How he broke the rules; how he followed his heart; how he ignored everyone’s opinion; how he followed his intuition; how he this; how he that. Then

Cupcakes

2011-04-25T13:22:00.044+05:30

Dan Mullagathanny could not send any more FOLLOW requests on Twitter. Since he opened a new account about a month ago, he had only three FOLLOWERS but he was FOLLOWING over 400. He knew that anymore follow clicks and Twitter would ban his account for suspicious activity. They had already warned him. He had arrived on Twitter from Facebook, where his Friendships Requests were blocked.

Lemons Hanging From My Bumper

2011-04-09T09:42:00.019+05:30

Kim Macedo Ever since i was a child i've heard all sorts of superstitions. Probably because i was born and brought up in India where people believe anything they hear. I grew up in Bangalore killing donnekatas (chameleons) because it peed on one of the God's feet and so was considered a dirty animal. Another slimy-looking lizard had to be killed because, apparently, that lizard would grow up

The Interview - No Certificates

2011-03-24T10:35:00.016+05:30

Q So Desmond, why did you join advertising? Desmond Next to fishing, it was the only field that didn’t insist on education and certificates, so it was easy for me to join. Q Howcome you don’t have any certificates? Desmond You don’t get an education if you go fishing, so how can they give you a certificate? Q So what is your background? Desmond Enough to get me into advertising. Q Which is

Watch The Irresponsible Book

2011-03-15T07:51:00.008+05:30

Watch this short video:Watch Dan Mullagathanny's Irresponsible Book

Office Speak - Another Interview with Dez

2011-02-27T13:39:00.021+05:30

Reshma So now that you have become a writer you need not go fishing. Dez True. Reshma Do you have any hobbies? Anything you'd like to do or learn in case you fail as a writer? Dez I'd like to learn Office Speak. Reshma What's that? Dez Expressions like, "Let's meet post lunch and figure out life.""You know where I'm coming from." "Let's get everyone up to speed." Reshma Oh...you sound like

Brief Interview of Author of Dan Mullagathanny's Irresponsible Stories by Reshma Shah

2011-02-24T20:30:00.027+05:30

Reshma So Desmond, tell me, why did you write that blog? Dez I had nothing else to do. Reshma If you had nothing else to do you could have gone fishing or mountaineering. Why write a blog? Dez It was considered a cool thing to write a blog. Reshma Since when did you do what was cool? Dez Since they started blogs. Reshma So if they didn't start blogs, you wouldn't have started writing...is that

The Dan Stories. Now in a Book

2011-02-07T06:37:00.075+05:30

Dear Readers, Dan Mullagathanny is a guy growing old in a country growing young. So many of the stories in this book are about India from 2000 onwards, as seen by Dan. Its reckless storytelling, often on a thin, precipitous line of logic. Dan Mullagathanny, the character, loots the stories from a blog and sells them to a publisher(he even writes about his author in the book). That’s how

One came out with the Fridge, the other came out with the Washing Machine

2011-01-19T06:56:00.018+05:30

Recently, Dan Mullagathanny read an essay by a friend, Fritz, titled, “Everyone Wants You To Fall In Love.” Among his praises of love, Fritz said, “Love makes philosophers out of bankers.” Up to a point, Dan agreed. Then love breeds marriages, and the same philosophers become bankers. See how couples handle their individual statuses at home. If one of the spouses is working, s/he will say, “I

Everybody wants you to fall in love.

2011-01-11T21:24:00.013+05:30

Fritz Gonsalves The most used, abused, quoted, misquoted and twisted four-letter word in the history of four letter words. The only other four-letter word that’s less ambiguous, yet equally interesting is Fuck. Love is ambidextrous. It can work as a suffix and a prefix. You can add love to hate and vice-versa and it will work fine. Love to my understanding is an all-weather, all-terrain bike.

If you can’t dream it, then daydream it.

2010-12-04T09:51:00.006+05:30

Fritz Gonsalvez “Pay attention! Come back from the moon,” barked the mathematics tutor while hammering Pythagoras’ theorem into my fiendish little brain. I came back at the speed of light, but not from moon. Instead, from Centre Court, Wimbledon. I was playing in the 1992 Men’s Singles Championship and the only person standing in between the trophy and me was Andre Agassi. While Princess Diana

Goodbye People

2010-08-30T12:10:00.012+05:30

Abhishek Deshwal – his farewell letter to his colleaguesIt might not really matter if I stay or leave but I thought a few words of advice might help (It might also prove that I haven’t entirely wasted my experience here). Ok, the first thing which I repeatedly tell everyone ‘It’s only advertising and if anything goes wrong, no ones gonna die’. So stop screaming and making a deadline delay sound

Why I Left Facebook

2010-07-19T17:01:00.016+05:30

Molly Schoemann, New YorkBecause every damn time I signed on to Facebook my feed went like this:[Girl you found distasteful in high school]: Has posted pictures from her wedding!Click here to view her photos, while wondering if perhaps you misjudged her back in the day. Find photos distasteful, even for wedding photos. Feel slightly depressed, if also vindicated.[Person you barely talk to who

Just The Kind Of Face You Make

2010-07-09T11:53:00.015+05:30

Fritz Gonsalves, New Delhi“Your dad suffered a heart attack, but he is fine now”. That was my friend calling me at 10 a.m in the morning sometime in April and that was the first time I made this awful fart kind of face. I allowed the news to sink in and then called up my bother and broke the news to him. There was a 30-second silence and in all probability he was busy making the same face. The

Same Woman. Different Decade.

2010-04-27T14:20:00.011+05:30

Omkar Sane, Bombay Indian advertising has and continues to be chauvinistic. When will the portrayal of women in advertising ever change from the current stereotype? Let’s tackle this issue in the oldest known format: Q & A. Answer as honestly as you can. Q. What do you think about women? A. They’re great. Q. Okay, women in ads, more specifically. A. They’re unchanged, like Bollywood

Anything that’s worse is better

2010-04-07T15:32:00.011+05:30

Anupam Basu, Bombay The human race has perfect explanations to everything that goes on. It's not that we have the answers, we just have good justifications. They are not based on science, fact, logic, or, for that matter, on hate, love or other such emotions. Just this: beyond a point we do not want to have much to do with them. I list here a few of the many platitudes we love to believe in.

Save Conversations, Recycle Them

2009-11-17T14:44:00.024+05:30

Kim S Macedo It’s a weekend. We guys meet at a friend’s place and start to catch up. Suddenly one guy says, “Did you see that car parked down the road?” One car freak will give you the car’s history, “Yeah, it’s a 1969 Ford Mustang Shelby.” And so it starts. While everyone is talking about cars, one guy is looking at the TV in the background. He’s watching a scene from a movie. He diverts

I think I should get married for their sake.

2009-10-20T10:56:00.010+05:30

Fritz Gonsalves, BombayI’m 30, unmarried and I’m quite happy. But there is this bunch of people who have lost their sleep because I’m still unmarried. I never imagined that being a bachelor would be the cause for concern in the lives of so many people. Now I’m not perturbed or pissed with anyone. I think I have given them the right to be concerned about me but, at the same time, I have completely

One Day We All Met On Facebook

2009-07-22T15:58:00.027+05:30

[Some days ago a few of us friends met on Facebook. Save a few spellchecks and minor editing, this is a pristine account of what started in the Status Box of Desmond Macedo, followed by comments] Desmond Macedo Now we can stop complaining about lack of rain and start complaining about floods; after the floods come, we can complain about poor administration to tackle the floods. July 8 at 10:

Mothers of Sons

2009-03-29T11:15:00.016+05:30

Preeti Sharma"It's a boy." That statement sets off a series of lifelong changes for a mother whose apron strings gently, but tenaciously, wind themselves around the tiny boy-child's body. Her heartbeat resigns itself to be wholly dependent on his, her self-worth now judged only by sacrifices she can make for him, her heart vows to cook his favourite foods, wash his clothes, keep shrewd girls (