Meet Parashar Kulkarni, the Asia winner at the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2016

Updated on: May 14, 2016, 17:24:04 IST

Hindustan Times | By Poorva Joshi, Mumbai

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Parashar Kulkarni’s award-winning short story is set against the backdrop of four policemen looking for a cow in colonial India

On April 30, Kulkarni was declared Asia’s Regional Winner at the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2016. He is now competing with regional winners from Africa, Europe, Canada and the Caribbean, for the £5,000 (Rs 4.8lakh appox) grand prize, which will be announced in June. “ I wrote the first draft of Cow and Company as part of a novella in 2014. During that period, I was overwhelmed by environmentalists and animal rights activists,” explains Kulkarni.

Memories of Mumbai

Currently a professor at Yale NUS College, Singapore, Kulkarni grew up in Mumbai, and is a graduate in commerce from RA Poddar College, Matunga. So how did writing come into the picture? Kulkarni owes his love for literature to his grandfather. “He was a voracious reader. As his eyes weakened, he paid me a rupee a day to read excerpts from the Maharashtra Times,” he recalls.

Kulkarni is fond of reading the works of G K Chesterton and PL Deshpande, a veteran Marathi short story writer. “I believe short stories encourage writers to experiment with the content. They are also a more democratic and a more therapeutic form. Like cricket, they can be played by anyone, anywhere and anytime. Not everyone can put in the effort, enthusiasm or time to play a test match..” he says.

Read on

Read an excerpt from Cow and Company and the other short stories from the competition on commonwealthwriters.org. Also hear a podcast with Kulkarni where he discusses his short story.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Poorva Joshi
Poorva Joshi is a Senior Content Producer with nearly five years of experience in journalism. She covers Indian politics and geopolitics, with a focus on diplomatic relations, trade negotiations, and economic policy between countries. She has previously worked at India Today, CNN-News18 and India TV. Over the years, she has reported extensively on major national and international developments, including the Air India plane crash, the Pahalgam terror attack, India–US trade tensions, tensions in the Middle East, high-profile crime stories in India, multiple state Assembly elections, and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. She spearheaded the Bihar Assembly elections live blog, which drew over one million users to the Hindustan Times website. Her reporting on India–US tariff and trade tensions has consistently driven strong readership and engagement for the platform. In addition to reporting, she has spent a significant part of her career leading newsroom shifts, ideating stories, editing and fine-tuning copies, and seeing coverage through from planning to publication, alongside writing original articles. At HT, she received the Insta Award for being the top contributor to the HT News Team in November.Read More

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