Briefs and Book Matters.
WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, & WHY
Jupneet Singh, an MIT graduate and the first female Air Force ROTC Rhodes Scholar, is one of 30 recipients of the 2025 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship. Each will receive $90,000 for two years of study. Singh, who also earned two master’s degrees from Oxford, is pursuing an MD at Harvard. Other Indian American winners: Sreekar Mantena, Devika Ranjan, Arjun Ramani, Eshika Kaul, Vaithish Velazhahan, and Swati Srinivasan.
Vikas Khanna, a Michelin-starred chef and restaurateur, won the Global Vision Award 2025 from Travel + Leisure magazine. A cookbook author and filmmaker as well, Khanna was named Person of the Year by Harvard’s South Asia Association (SAA). He has opened acclaimed restaurants in Dubai, and he’s a judge on Celebrity MasterChef. In 2024, his restaurant in New York, Bungalow, earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand Award.
Rana Dasgupta is one of eight recipients of the 2025 Windham Campbell Prize from Yale. The winners, who are nominated and judged secretly, will get $175,000 each. Dasgupta, who started out as a novelist, is the author of Capital: The Eruption of Delhi, and the forthcoming After Nations, which analyzes the consequences of weakening or failing nations. For several years, he taught a course at Brown on 21-century ideas and culture.
Tara Prasad is an Indian American figure skater who gave up her U.S. citizenship to become an Indian citizen. She competes for India in women’s single skating. Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 2000, she now divides her time between Chennai and Colorado Springs, where she trains. A three-time national champion in India, Prasad won silver medals last year at the Reykjavik International Games and at Skate Celje in Slovenia.
Reshma Kewalramani is the sole Indian American included in “TIME100: The Most Influential People of 2025.” She’s the CEO and president of Vertex, a biotech company that under her leadership won the first-ever FDA approval for CRISPR-based therapy. It’s used for treating sickle cell disease patients by correcting their DNA mutations. Kewalramani, who earned her MD from Boston University, has won other honors.
Jay Bhattacharya, having won Senate confirmation (53-47), is the new director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Bhattacharya did his education (BA, MA, PhD, and MD) at Stanford, where he has held multiple appointments as a professor and researcher specializing in health economics. He’s a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which laid out an alternative approach for tackling the Covid pandemic.
Jainendra Jain is one of three winners of the 2025 Wolf Prize in Physics. The $100,000 award also comes with a diploma and a medal of honor. A professor of physics at Penn State University, where he holds an endowed chair, Jain has been recognized for his work on quantum matter and “for advancing our understanding of the surprising properties of two-dimensional electron systems in strong magnetic fields,” as the citation notes.
Meghna Chakrabarti is the host and editor of On Point, a weekday show on National Public Radio (NPR). Focusing on news and analysis, this hour-long program airs from Boston, where Chakrabarti also hosted a Modern Love podcast. Her honors include a regional Edward R. Murrow award. She earned a master’s degree in environmental science and risk management from Harvard and an MBA from Boston University.
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BOOK MATTERS
Optional Practical Training (Graywolf), by Shubha Sunder. In Sunder’s debut novel, Pavitra, a student from India, has a year in the U.S. for work experience after earning her degree in physics. It’s called Optional Practical Training, or OPT, which the current administration wants to end. What Pavitra wants to do, above all, is finish her novel and not let her family’s expectations dictate her life. The story of her year-long sojourn in Massachusetts, where Pavitra teaches at a private high school, is told through the conversations she has with various people. “Quietly subversive, this is an immigration narrative to undermine the various reductionist immigration narratives of our moment,” writes Jonathan Frey in The Millions. Sunder is one of ten recipients of the $50,000 Whiting Awards this year. The winners are picked based on their early achievement and the promise shown for greater future success. Sunder’s Boomtown Girl is a short story collection set in her native Bengaluru. She teaches creative writing at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
Searches: Selfhood in the Digital World (Pantheon), by Vauhini Vara. Before writing The Immortal King Rao, her debut novel, Vara, who graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, was a correspondent for leading publications (she was The Wall Street Journal’s first Facebook reporter). In this essay collection, Vara puts her journalism background to good use as she meditates on the promise and peril of AI, among other tech-related topics. And she draws on personal experiences, not just reporting. Vara adds a creative touch to her deep dive by incorporating her Google searches, Amazon reviews, and ChatGPT conversations, one of which touches on a family tragedy. Technology, despite its marvels, has many pitfalls. Guides like Vara, whose novel also explored the digital world, will become increasingly important in helping us make sense of it. “Vara is an appealing narrator—smart, funny, honest,” notes The New Yorker.
Our Beautiful Boys (Ballantine), by Sameer Pandya. A professor at UC Santa Barbara, Pandya is the author of Members Only, a novel, and the story collection The Blind Writer. In his new novel, which will appeal to young adults as well, three teenage boys bond over their passion for football. They play for their high school—and surprisingly, one of them is Vikram Shastri, a studious and strait-laced kid who seems all set to attend a prestigious, pricey university. Not only is Vikram a good student but he obeys his parents and stays out of trouble. The vibe changes when the football team pulls off a big victory. Vikram, in a celebratory mood, heads to the hills with his friends, MJ and Diego, for a wild party. But then their world spins out of control when they are accused of assault. Race, class, and rivalry play a role. “A triumph, by turns, of literature, sports writing, cultural criticism, and ethical philosophy,” notes 60 Minutes correspondent L. Jon Wertheim.
Flirting with Disaster (Dell), by Naina Kumar. The title may remind some readers of a ’90s film, but Kumar’s novel, which could be a good pick for beach reading this summer, has an Indian American theme and characters. Meenaand Nikhil meet in Texas, their home state, and have an impulsive, un-Indian wedding following a whirlwind romance. Their marriage, like their abbreviated nuptials in Las Vegas, doesn’t last long, perhaps unsurprisingly. Meena moves to Washington, D.C., where she becomes a top Capitol Hill lawyer. Her new beau, Shake, is also a thriving attorney. But then there’s the pesky business of getting a divorce. Meena returns to Texas, but instead of making the split official, she gets stuck with Nikhil in his house, all because of a fast-approaching hurricane. Are they fated to be together ... till death does them apart? Library Journal calls it an “emotion-filled” reimagining of Sweet Home Alabama. Kumar’s debut novel, Say You’ll Be Mine, was published last year. She lives in Texas.
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