Writing is in Sunil’s genes. His father, Lt. Col. B.R. Sharan, was a prolific writer whose books include Status of Indian Women: A Historical Perspective.
Sunil grew up in a home where five languages were spoken: English, Hindi, French, Punjabi, and Urdu. He has also learned German. With a gift for language and literature, Sunil won numerous prizes in school and university for writing and debating. A yearlong stay in France helped make him fluent in French.
Sunil has attended four universities: Purdue University at West Lafayette, Indiana; the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris; and the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, India. He has two master’s degrees, one in electrical engineering and the other in physics. At the Ecole Polytechnique, he pursued the Jean Monnet Program, which is considered the French version of the Rhodes scholarship. He has worked in...