Who’s your favorite fictional hero or heroine?

Bridget Jones. Seymour Glass. Lily Bart. Scheherazade.

You named your character on “The Mindy Project” after Jhumpa Lahiri. Ever hear from her about that? What’s your favorite book of hers?

The back story of my character is that Jhumpa Lahiri is her distant cousin and Mindy is very jealous of her and says, “She thinks she’s sooo literary and soooo pretty.” I have never met Jhumpa. I think she lives in Italy? I love all her books, but “The Namesake” struck me the most personally. She also wrote a short piece called “Rice” for The New Yorker about a pulao recipe her father makes. I have it printed out and saved in my desk.

What kind of reader were you as a child? Your favorite books and authors?

I read everything. I visited India when I was 11, and my cousins turned me on to Enid Blyton. I loved reading about English boarding schools, like in the “Malory Towers” series, which was actually written for children much younger than me. In middle school I discovered Stephen King and tore through “The Shining” and “Carrie.” In high school it was all Jane Austen and Edith Wharton.

Have you ever gotten in trouble for reading a book?

A little bit, yes. My production company is called Kaling International, and the title card is an illustration of a girl reading a book in bed by flashlight, until her father yells up to her room, “Go to bed!” and she quickly shuts off her light. This must have happened dozens of times when I was growing up, and it’s one of my favorite childhood memories. My parents encouraged reading, but they didn’t anticipate me reading Michael Crichton’s “Sphere” until 2 a.m. on a school night.

You studied classics at Dartmouth. What was the best thing you read there?

I loved translating the “Aeneid” from Latin. Poor Aeneas and his pietas. That guy could not catch a break. I also love stories within stories, and the “Aeneid” is full of that.

Whom would you want to write your life story?

Michael Lewis.

What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?