New Delhi: In October 2026, Ashoke Sen became the first Indian to win the Oskar Klein Award. When asked how the award, or the Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri that before it, had changed in his life, the Bangalore-based Bengali physicist, casually responded, “It doesn’t change anything.” He is happy, though. That much he will concede.Decades of work on S-duality, black hole entropy and string field theory leave Sen with a great many uneventful days. Then come the days, as he puts it, when “there are results.” He sees no real difference between the two. A good day, he believes, is simply one spent doing what you love. Ask him to explain that love to the unversed, and he is characteristically plain. String theory, he says, is “a theory that tries to give a unified description of all matter and the forces between them.” The shelf has grown crowded: the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, the Dirac Medal. So, in its own way, has the household. Sen is married to fellow physicist Sumathi Rao, who is affiliated with the World Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society and the Indian Academy of Sciences. The two met while pursuing their PhDs in the United States and married in 1983. Their home is lined with a shared collection of books and Rao’s intricate paintings. She keeps her hands busy with the brush rather than the ladle.Do not look for him on social media. He has built no personal brand and is not about to start. Yet he refuses to treat good research and visibility as enemies. “Research is useful only if others use it,” he says, though recognition “may not be immediate” for everyone.What, then, of the young researcher staring down a long, uncertain road? Persist, says Sen. “It is important to be persistent in exploring what you think is important. No one knows when a breakthrough will come.” His own breakthrough arrived in 2012.Born in Kolkata in 1956, Sen studied physics at Presidency College and IIT Kanpur, then earned his doctorate at Stony Brook in 1982. He went on to hold research posts in the United States, including at Fermilab and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. And then he did what so many of his peers did not: he came home. “I never really thought of settling abroad,” he says. Brain drain never troubled him. Nor, he adds, did working in India pose many disadvantages for a theoretical physicist.Home, for Sen, is hardly a place of rest. Even in Kolkata, he plans his trips around lectures at different universities. What can one say? He is a busy genius.This genius, however, was not evident on the first exam he ever sat. As a schoolboy, he deliberately left questions unanswered, having overheard other mothers quizzing their children: “So, how many questions did you leave out?” Every Bengali mother, and every Bengali child, knows that question. Young Sen simply took it literally. “I was stupid,” he laughs.Today, he works at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences in Bengaluru, where he theorises and, just as devotedly, cooks up a storm for the people he cares about, students and colleagues included. His generosity leaves people in awe. One younger family member, who asked not to be named, recalls once approaching professor Sen with a physics problem meant for a Class 5 or 6 student. “I’m sure to him it was like ABCs, but he happily obliged,” they say.So the accolades will keep arriving, and he is grateful for each. But there is too much else to do. Picture him on the terrace, notebook and iPad at hand, when a wild parrot swoops in and begins shredding his notes. He does not dwell on the lost work. What matters to him in that moment is capturing the scene, to be fondly remembered later.Sohini Sengupta (they/she) is a journalist, writer and essayist. Their bylines include Hindustan Times, Feminism in India, India Today, and other niche U.S.-based publications.