India-US ties ‘very personal’, time of great opportunity for both countries: Usha Vance

“It is a very personal relationship because I have family members who are in India, and I have many family members who are in the US. And I did grow up visiting India and visiting those family members, and they grew up visiting me. So that’s always been a relationship that I’ve personally thought of as very important,” she said, during an interaction with USISPF Chairman John Chambers. “More broadly, this is a time of great opportunity. And if my husband were here, he’d say the same thing,” she remarked.

“Obviously, the relationship has ebbed and flowed at times. There are times when one country’s needs and one country’s goals are different from the other. But in the next four years, and in the future, the fact that there is this established Indian-American population here and so many people in India who know the country and know the people who are here doing great things, having great opportunities, these personal ties actually have something to do with it,” she added.

‘We followed radically different paths… converged’

Born in San Diego to Indian-born Telugu-speaking professors, her father, Krish Chilukuri, is an aerospace engineer from IIT-Madras, while her mother, Lakshmi, is a marine biologist and now provost at one of the colleges in UC San Diego. The family moved to the US in the 1980s.

Talking about her recent visit to India as the US’ Second Lady, along with her husband and kids, she said, “When we were visiting recently, I was struck by the number of people who came up to me to say how much they loved our country, how they visited family, how they visited just for pleasure, that they were hoping for a close relationship looking forward.”

She said her parents moved to San Diego to pursue higher education. “That’s sort of what happened, as I think it does for a lot of Indian Americans. They come, they find a community and an educational institution, and they find a real home in those places,” she said, about her growing-up years.

“I grew up in a pretty Asian-American community, but we had a lot of family friends who were Indian-Americans. We had friends from all over as well, and everyone was really invested in being a part of this country, and pursuing the American dream for themselves and their kids,” she said.

However, later, as she went to Yale, she said her “life veered towards the East Coast, and I married someone who’s from the eastern half of the country”. The couple met at Yale Law School, she said. “We had followed radically different paths in life and converged in the same place. JD, of course, had grown up in Ohio. He had been in the Marine Corps as an enlisted Marine. And I had taken the diligent, progressive path of high school to college to graduate school and some jobs and to law school. And we have these really different backgrounds, but the reality is that we had so much in common,” she added.

‘They are very into’ PM Modi

Coming back to her India trip, Usha Vance called it “the trip of a lifetime”. “My children had never been to India, with the pandemic and JD’s entry into politics. And so they’d grown up just knowing so much about this country, the stories, the food, the relationships with grandparents and friends. But they had never actually seen it. So it was mind-blowing from their perspective. And then for me and JD, it just could not have been any more special. We had the opportunity to see some of the greatest sights in North India, including the Taj Mahal,” she said.

#WATCH | In a conversation at the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum in Washington, DC, US Second Lady Usha Vance recalls her visit to India and her children’s experience meeting PM Modi.

She says, “When we were at the Prime Minister’s residence, our son was just so taken by… pic.twitter.com/OSEnfffrok

— ANI (@ANI) June 2, 2025

“We’re looking forward to our next trip and trying to get to the parts of the country where my family is from as well,” she added.

She said meeting PM Modi was really special. “And it’s funny. My kids saw him. They were sort of sleep-deprived in Paris. And they saw an Indian man with a white beard and white hair. And they just put him in the grandfather category immediately. So they are very into him. They just love him. And he really cemented his status by giving our five-year-old a birthday present that day,” she said, recalling their visit to the PM’s residence in New Delhi.

“So when we were able to visit his home, they just sort of ran up. They were hugging him. He was just incredibly kind and generous to them. It was a very productive conversation for JD and the Prime Minister, of course. When we were at the Prime Minister’s residence, our son was taken by the entire cart of mangoes that was available for him to eat, he announced to the Prime Minister that he thought he could maybe live there,” she recalled on a lighter note.

But he dialled that back a little bit as he remembered how hot it had been earlier in the day, she said. While Ewan, their oldest child at 7, was taken by the sculptures in the temple that he visited, Vivek, their middle child, was very excited to meet elephants, peacocks, a camel and just any animal. “And then our daughter, she’s sort of along for the ride. She really enjoyed her time in an auto-rickshaw,” she said.

Reading challenge

Vance also spoke about her work and priorities as the Second Lady after she recently announced a reading challenge for children. “I’m conscious that reading scores have dropped over time. And that is something lots of people are working to rectify, and I wanted to do something small to contribute to that,” she said.

“Secondly, we live in a world of distractions now. It’s very easy to just pick up your phone all the time. It’s pinging you. And that worries me. I do think that one of the things that is very special about being a human is that we have this capacity for sustained thought and reflection, and those produce very beautiful things, like the Taj Mahal that we visited.”

Even as literacy will be a big focus of her efforts, the Vances are also starting to get involved in organising the Special Olympics in the US.