Meet Usha Vance's 96-year-old grandaunt: A genius in the fields of physics, Vedic maths

Usha Chilukuri's 96-year-old grandaunt, Prof Shantamma, shares family's academic legacy. Usha, wife of Ohio Senator JD Vance, urged to bridge US-India ties.

“Are you keen on Vedic mathematics or physics? I am happy to teach you more.” It’s how Usha Chilukuri’s 96-year-old paternal grandaunt, Shantamma, greeted this reporter from Visakhapatnam on Saturday morning. With the ease of flicking a switch, the nonagenarian professor of physics rattled the five-volume series on Vedic maths she worked on even as she went on to trace the Chilukuri family tree.

Professor Shantamma, the nonagenarian professor of physics (File photo)

Usha is the wife of Ohio Senator and Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance.

On a rainy day in balmy, sea-side Vizag, she is more than happy to detail her family’s contribution to academics and society. Her husband, Subramanyam Sastry, and Usha Chilukuri’s grandfather Rama Sastry were brothers, making Usha her celebrity grandniece. The Chilukuris came from Vadduru and Chilakaluripeta in Krishna district and were Veda Avadhanis, or scholars in Vedic literature, chanting, and its propagation. Her husband and his brothers were fluent in Sanskrit and Telugu with Dr Subramanyam Sastry himself being a professor of Telugu Literature at Andhra University in Vizag.

“But the second generation took to academics even as they were involved in Vedic literature,” Shantamma said.

More than a handful of decades were spent in Chennai (then Madras) around the time the Indian Institute of Madras (IIT-M) came up in 1959. Shantamma recounts the days when her brother-in-law Rama Sastry worked in the lab she helped set up at IIT-M. And so along with Rama Sastry, Usha’s grandfather, moved her father and his siblings - two brothers and a sister, Dr Sharada Jandhyala, who still works as an anesthetist in Chennai.

Then came the journey from Andhra to America. What is it that makes people migrate to the US? “Oh, it is the gravitational force, you know? Freedom, success, and comfort,” quips Prof Shantamma. Perhaps it was this pull that led Usha’s parents to migrate to the US in 1980 to San Diego where Usha and her younger sister were born.

As professors of engineering and molecular biology, Usha’s parents were devout Hindus even upon moving continents and always stayed vegetarians, a trait that Usha herself referred to in one of her recent speeches after her husband JD Vance was named Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s running mate. Usha’s younger sister Shreya is a mechanical engineer and works at a semiconductor firm in San Diego, California.

“My three brothers went to the US to pursue higher studies and have been there since. Before that, we were in Chennai as little children and I have stayed here all along,” said Dr Sharada, Usha’s paternal aunt. Hard work, intelligence, and grit are Usha’s characteristic credentials that she is known for in her family as much as her being a top legal professional. Her aunt packs her a warm blessing saying she wishes for Usha to “get whatever she sets her eyes on.”

But Prof Shantamma has some advice too. “India is the world’s largest democracy. And the US is the world’s oldest. I am sure there is so much for the citizens of USA to benefit from Indian culture and values,” she said. As much as she credits Indians living in America for catalysing a turnaround of companies, she has a word of caution for Usha asking her to consume time to bed into her plausible new role.

“Her husband will probably be a lawmaker, and she is a legal professional. They must bring in policies to arrest the brain drain from India. While we must contribute to every country’s progress, we must watch our own too,” Prof Shantamma signs off wishing for her grandniece to occupy the highest position the US can confer upon her today.