When former US president Joe Biden picked US Senator Kamala Harris to be his running mate on the Democratic ticket for November’s US presidential election, it sparked a frenzy on the other side of the globe to track down her connections to Chennai, the southern Indian city where her mother was born.
On Twitter and Facebook, a flurry of people chronicled every minute link, including her grandparents’ home in the Besant Nagar neighborhood, from where her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, set off as a teenager to pursue a doctoral degree at the University of California, Berkeley.
Undated photographs surfaced of Kamala and younger sibling Maya in saris smiling with their grandparents during a visit.
Photo: Reuters
Many said that they regard Harris as the de facto Democratic frontrunner in four or eight years.
Writer Cauvery Madhavan captured the hysteria in a tweet: “If you’re wondering what that loud windy up sound is - it’s all of Chennai cranking the #SixDegreesOfSeparation machine!! Any moment now my mother is going to triumphantly reveal that her pharmacist’s father was @KamalaHarris’s grandma’s preferred tailor.”
Another Twitter user, Priya Ravichandran, jested: “I was asked to Google and find which relative lives in besant nagar. People are this close to renting party bus and do drive by near their house and celebrate kamala.”
Senator Harris is the first person of Indian descent on a major ticket in a US presidential election.
Indian media said that a Biden-Harris win would further shore up an India-US relationship that had already improved markedly under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The closer ties between Modi and US President Donald Trump culminated in two giant stadium events in front of tens of thousands of supporters — one in Houston, Texas, in September last year that saw the two leaders walking hand-in-hand to a rock-star like reception, and the other in Modi’s home state of Gujarat in February.
TV crews raced to hunt down an assortment of Harris’ aunts and even a great-uncle who detailed her visits to the sprawling metropolis and her strolls on its humid beaches discussing democracy and equality with her grandfather, a retired government official.
A local newspaper, the Hindu BusinessLine, carried the headline: “Kamala Devi Harris and the destiny-changing coconuts from Chennai.”
The story described Harris’s aunt praying for her victory in the California Senate elections nine years ago by breaking 108 coconuts, a popular religious ritual, at the local temple.
The paper quoted Harris phoning her aunt to say: “Chithi [aunt], please pray for me and break coconuts at the temple.”
Twitter users highlighted her Indianness beginning with the name Kamala, which means “lotus” in several Indian languages.
CNN’s local partner tweeted that “Kamala Harris loves idlis. And, sambhar” — fluffy rice cakes and spicy lentil stew often eaten for breakfast in India.
Harris, whose father is of Jamaican ancestry, has downplayed her family’s India ties, although she has spoken of how the deep conversations with her grandfather during visits helped shaped her political views.
However, people on social media were quick to appropriate her as completely Indian.
A video from last year in which she is seen with Mindy Kaling cooking a masala dosa, a south Indian savory crepe filled with spicy potatoes, is circulating wildly on WhatsApp groups in India.
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