Two Indian names in US news get me smiling and excited

Pooja Jhunjhunwala

Again, read that wonderfully rhythmic last name: Jhunjhunwala.

Doesn't that name make you smile with pleasant thoughts?

The first and last name clearly signal India as the origin.  I came across that name in this piece, a rather trivial one, on the new Secretary of State, John Kerry, who will attach a "JK" tag if he is personally tweeting via the State's Twitter handle.

I asked the State Department's press team on Tuesday to confirm that Kerry will be sticking with the "JK" signature—not that there's any reason that he shouldn't. Spokeswoman Pooja Jhunjhunwala replied promptly and in the affirmative.

"Pooja Jhunjhunwala" caught my attention.

So, of course, I googled it, and her LinkedIn profile is:

The other Indian name was not in any trivial tweet news, but about the head of the National Science Foundation (NSF) stepping down:

Subra Suresh, director of the National Science Foundation since late 2010, will leave the federal science agency in March and become president of Carnegie Mellon University in July, the NSF and the university announced on Tuesday.

Until I read that, I had no idea that the NSF's chief was an Indian-American.  The fact that he is going on to become the president of a leading research university with quite a reputation made me wonder if he is the first Indian-American to become a president of a a university of such a caliber.

Subra sounded like a short for a name like "Subramanian," which will signal origins in Tamil Nadu.

More than a smile now, and sheer curiosity took over, and Wikipedia to the rescue:

Suresh graduated from high school in Tamil Nadu, India, at the age of 15. He received his BTech from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in Chennai in May 1977

Houston, we have a confirmation!

But, I needed more, which is how I came across this profile, which notes that Suresh:

reached the pinnacle of American science from fairly modest beginnings as the son of a local government employee and a homemaker in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Something of a prodigy in high school, he joined debating teams in three languages: Sanskrit, Hindi, and Tamil, the local language. He also studied English throughout school and eventually added French and some German. Fleetingly, he thought of a career in the foreign service, but chose engineering as a path to financial success and an opportunity to go abroad.

Boy, is there anything that he could not do in school :)  And the honors along the way!!!

I would smile a lot more, I suppose, if only people in India were not the argumentative Indians, eh!