Kiran Khalap

Kiran Khalap, co-founder and Managing Director, chlorophyll (www.chlorophyll.in) brand consultancy.

Born 1958, juggles three passions and one career.

His passions are writing (www.kirankhalap.com), rock climbing (weekend) and spiritual evolution (every day:-) vipassana).

Kiran won the Indo-UK Asian Age Short-Story Writing competition in 1995.

His travel writing on exotic locations like Angkor Wat, Spain, Morocco,Venice and Banaras have been regularly published in Man’s World, India’s premier men’s magazine.

In 2005, he was invited by the French Tourism Department to write on Wine Country and the South of France.

His first novel 'Halfway Up the Mountain' was published in India in 2003.

Marion Boyars, the premier UK publisher, published its UK and US editions in 2005.

Kiran has read from the book to audiences in Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Beijing, London, New York and Napa Valley, California.

His second novel 'Two Pronouns and a Verb' was launched in Mumbai on February 5, 2012, in Delhi in April and in Singapore in May.

He was interviewed on the BBC in London and by ITV in NewYork.

Two of his novels,'The Song of Banaras' and 'Black River Run' await publishing.

Spiritual evolution:

Kiran discovered an inner freedom at the age of 21, in 1979, a result of reading J Krishnamurti, the great sage of the 20th century.

As his gesture of gratitude, Kiran joined one of the J Krishnamurti Foundation experimental residential schools (in Banaras) as a teacher.

For the next four years he was exposed to some of the finest philosophers and thinkers who conversed with Krishnamurti.

Kiran learnt and practices the vipassana system of meditation daily.