Ranjit Kulkarni

Ranjit Kulkarni is an author with a penchant for portraying characters from the real world and weaving stories around their apparently mundane lives. He is the creator of Jigneshbhai and Swami. Born and brought up in Mumbai, Kulkarni spent his childhood in the environs of urban, middle-class India. As an adult, he’s travelled the world, exploring the cityscapes of America, getting lost in the natural beauty of Europe, and absorbing the tastes and sounds of Asia. With his constant knack for observation and a deep seated fondness of reflection, he loves crafting tales that entertain and provoke thought. When not writing, Kulkarni loves reading and going on trips with his wife. He is an avid traveller, a passionate investor and a devoted student of spirituality. He loves ice-cream and chocolate too. He lives in Bangalore India.

Drig-Drishya-Viveka

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Notes Extracts from my reading of Drig-Drishya-Viveka by Sankaracharya The importance of Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka as an aid to the study of Vedānta has been well pointed out by the learned Swāmī Nikhilānanda in his introduction to this translation. The central theme of the work is that Brahman is realized through mystic or Yogic samādhi (concentration). After … Read more

The Flipside

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I spent most of my first two and a half decades of working life in a corporate job. It is a fairly stable career that assures a reasonably good life. After years on the grind, one might feel there is limited upside, but there is also limited downside. A creative life is different. The upside … Read more

First Lines

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50 isn’t very different from 49, I discovered the day after my 50th birthday. Did the above line catch your attention? I just wrote it as an experiment. When I started writing, a lot of courses told me that the first line of a story is very important. So, I cultivated this habit of noting … Read more

On Rituals

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Swami Vivekananda on Rituals: (Extracts from Complete Works) In the world’s ritualistic symbols we have an expression of the religious thought of humanity. It is easy to say that there is no use of rituals and temples and all such paraphernalia; every baby says that in modern times. But it must be easy for all … Read more

Do you know someone to…?

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I have been in situations where I have asked the question and then sought the answer. I have never found a satisfactory one. Do you know someone to…. take care of my social media? Someone who will manage my author Instagram account? Someone to run great ads on Amazon and Facebook? Someone who is a … Read more

On Teachers and Teaching

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Swami Vivekananda on Teachers and Teaching: (Extracts from Complete Works) It is an insult to a starving people to offer them religion; it is an insult to a starving man to teach him metaphysics. The whole gist of this teaching is that you should work like a master and not as a slave; work incessantly, … Read more

What Counts

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I used to submit stories to magazines a few years back. Most of them had rules for submission. It had to be in a particular format. Word or PDF. It had to be in a particular genre. The title should be in this font and the body should be in the other. Spacing should be … Read more

Factors of Longevity

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A Happy New Year 2024 to Everyone! I recently watched a series on Netflix called ‘Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones’. It is a documentary on a set of zones in the world (called Blue Zones) which consist of the highest percentage of centenarians as compared to the rest of the world. The … Read more

On Truth

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Swami Vivekananda on Truth: (Extracts from Complete Works) Man is not travelling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth. Love, truth, and unselfishness are not merely moral figures of speech, but they form our highest ideal, because in them lies such a manifestation of power. And what is … Read more

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