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Kulkarni serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. His academic portfolio is characterized by a deep investigation into how historical institutions and religious norms influence modern political and economic outcomes.
The novel follows the intertwined fates of a desperate artist, a corrupt police inspector, and a land mafia don. The prose is lean, muscular, and cinematic. Kulkarni employs a technique he calls "dirty realism"—a stripped-down aesthetic that refuses to sentimentalize poverty or romanticize violence.
It is worth noting that operates at the periphery of the Indian literary establishment. He does not appear frequently at literary festivals; he is not a fixture on Instagram book tours. This distance is deliberate. parashar kulkarni
Additionally, whispers from publishing circles suggest that a film adaptation of State of Violence is in early development with an independent production house in Mumbai. Given the novel's visceral visual style, it seems a perfect fit for the arthouse circuit.
Set in colonial India, the story follows a protagonist who attempts to register a cow as a limited liability company under the British legal system. It is a surreal, Kafkaesque tale that uses humor to expose the collision of Hindu economic traditions, British mercantile law, and the absurdities of bureaucratic colonialism. Kulkarni serves as an Assistant Professor in the
Kulkarni distrusts the single perspective. He frequently writes in the second person or shifts between multiple first-person accounts that contradict each other. This forces the reader to become a detective. Truth, in a Kulkarni story, is not something that exists; it is something that is negotiated, often badly.
This legal training is not a footnote in his biography; it is the skeleton key to his fiction. His stories are obsessed with contracts, loopholes, property rights, and the violent absurdity of legal systems. While other writers explore internal human conflict, Kulkarni explores the conflict between human desire and codified rulebooks. The prose is lean, muscular, and cinematic
Parashar Kulkarni is an acclaimed Indian writer and academic whose literary career reached a major milestone when he became the first Indian to win the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2016 for his debut piece of short fiction [13, 14, 15]. "Cow and Company" His award-winning story, Cow and Company
Kulkarni's bibliography reflects his interdisciplinary reach, spanning political science journals, development reviews, and literary anthologies: Publication/Outlet Can Religious Norms Undermine Effective Property Rights? British Journal of Political Science Fiction Cow and Company Granta / Commonwealth Writers Development Decentralised Forest Management for Reducing Deforestation 3ie Systematic Review Industry Analysis The Marine Seafood Export Supply Chain in India International Institute for Sustainable Development Impact and Legacy
The room went silent. In colonial India, cows were many things—deities, mothers, obstacles in the road—but they were rarely brand ambassadors for peppermint-flavored rubber.
Cow and Company is a satirical yet poignant tale set in the early 20th century, following four central characters—a writer, a researcher, a policeman, and a renegade—all intertwined in a chaotic search. The book navigates the sensitive terrain of religion, colonialism, and identity, using the motif of the 'cow' as a central anchor.
