Namaste. I’m Deepali Patwadkar — Deepa to my family, friends, and now, to this blog as well.
For twenty years, I lived the global IT life — projects, teams, deadlines, meetings, scrums, and long workdays. I spent many years in the USA, building a career that was comfortable, successful, and secure… but also strangely incomplete.
Something inside me kept whispering: “There is more. There is something you left behind.”
Eventually, we – Naren and I – returned home, to India. The return was not just physical, but spiritual too. Once back, I started reading Dnyaneshwari, the Marathi version of Bhagavad Gita. As if guided by my Guru, it opened a door that I didn’t know was waiting for me.
Soon, with Naren’s support, I left my well-paying IT job and enrolled for an MA in Indology. I wanted to understand India in all its layers — its Itihasa, its art, its philosophies, its stories, its civilizational journey. The more I studied, the more I realized: I wasn’t just learning about India. I was rediscovering myself.
I found young generation around me, growing up without the stories, values, and memories that once flowed naturally from one generation to the next. I met college students who had, the thirst to know their roots, a curiosity about their heritage but without the resources to authentic knowledge. In a way, they reminded me of my own younger self. They too were the inheritors of the Cultural Heritage and the Culture Identity that came with it.
Thus it began … I started sharing the stories, insights, maps, metaphors, and memories that our generation had missed… and the next generation is missing even more deeply. I wrote of Bharatiya Sanskruti, its depth, its beauty, its global reach, and its touch of Parees. Now I –
Re-connecting the Youth to the Indic Culture, One Story at a Time.
Deepali Patwadkar is a researcher, writer, and artist specializing in Indic knowledge systems, Itihasa-Purana studies, and the cultural history of the Indian subcontinent. She holds Master’s degrees in Computer Science and Indology, integrating analytical rigor with traditional scholarship to explore India’s epics, literature, astronomy, geography, and art from a multidisciplinary perspective. Her work is both reverent and refreshingly inventive — Chira-Puratana in its roots, Nitya-Nutan in its reach.
Her academic work includes research papers published in peer-reviewed journals, contributions to the study of the Ramayana, and analyses of civilizational narratives through textual, geographical, and astronomical lenses. She serves as an Adjunct Faculty for courses on Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) and Study of Epics at well-regarded institutions in Pune, where she engages undergraduate and postgraduate students in classical texts, cultural hermeneutics, and civilizational memory studies.
Deepali is also an active public intellectual. Her columns and essays have appeared in leading newspapers and magazines including Maharashtra Times, Sakal, News Bharati, Mumbai Tarun Bharat, Saptahik Vivek, and Prasad. She is frequently invited as a speaker for academic forums, cultural institutions, and corporate learning sessions. Her lecture series on the Ramayana at the R. C. Dhere Cultural Research Centre has received wide appreciation, and her talks at TATA Motors, Indic Studies, Rotary Club, MKSS School, and Indology Katta reflect her interdisciplinary ability to connect Itihasa with contemporary themes.
Her work extends into the domain of visual culture as the founder of KalaaPushpa, an initiative promoting Indian art traditions. She has produced curated colouring books featuring Gond, Maithili, and Chitrakathi styles. Her paintings inspired by the Ramayana and the Dnyaneshwari have been exhibited at prominent art galleries including Bal Gandharva Kaladalan, Raja Ravi Varma Art Gallery, and BM Art Gallery in Pune.
Deepali’s contributions have been recognized through awards such as the Samarth Puraskar (2024) and the Ranaragini Award (2023). She was also invited to speak at the G20 Conference on Sustainable Lifestyle hosted at Indus University, Ahmedabad (April 2023), where she presented perspectives on sustainability rooted in Indic traditions.
Contact – deepali.patwadkar@gmail.com
Deepali Patwadkar 