{"id":70016,"date":"2020-08-25T01:05:52","date_gmt":"2020-08-25T06:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=70016"},"modified":"2020-08-26T20:10:45","modified_gmt":"2020-08-27T01:10:45","slug":"chiththi-with-one-tamil-word-in-her-acceptace-speech-us-democratic-vice-presidential-candidate-kamala-harris-warms-the-hearts-of-millions-pf-tamils-in-inia-and-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=70016","title":{"rendered":"“Chiththi”: With One Tamil Word In Her Acceptace Speech, US Democratic Vice-Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris Warms The Hearts of Millions pf Tamils in India and Throughout the World"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nBy<\/p>\n

Hannah Ellis-Petersen<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a child wandering between the legs of the aunts, uncles and family friends who filled her grandparents\u2019 apartment in Chennai, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, a young Kamala Harris grew used to being addressed in Tamil.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Senator Kamala Harris<\/p><\/div>\n

It was the main language spoken by her grandmother, who had only fragmented English, and over the years of Harris\u2019s childhood trips from California to Chennai \u2013 which back then was called Madras \u2013 to visit her mother\u2019s side of the family, she slowly learned to understand, if not speak, the mother tongue of her Indian relatives.<\/p>\n

Standing at the Democratic convention podium last week accepting her historic nomination for US vice-president, Harris made a passing but significant nod to this aspect of her heritage. She said her mother had \u201craised us to know and be proud of our Indian heritage\u201d, adding: \u201cFamily is my uncles, my aunts and my chithis.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

.
\nHarris is the first candidate of Indian descent to be on a US presidential ticket, and her use of chithi, the Tamil term of endearment meaning \u201cauntie\u201d, sent reverberations through south Asian households in the US and also those watching 8,000 miles away in India.<\/p>\n

\u201cI literally have tears in my eyes,\u201d tweeted the model and chef Padma Lakshmi, who like Harris\u2019s mother was born in Chennai and moved to the US. \u201cKamala Harris just said \u2018chithis\u2019 which means auntie. My heart is so full right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harris\u2019s use of Tamil in her speech has boosted her growing fanbase in India, particularly in the tiny eastern Tamil Nadu village of Painganadu where her grandfather PV Gopalan was born in 1911 and which Harris visited once as a child with her grandmother.<\/p>\n

In the past week posters have appeared all over the village, emblazoned with Harris\u2019s face and bearing slogans expressing local pride, wishing her good luck and describing her as \u201clion-hearted\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bharathi Selvam, 27, whose grandfather knew Harris\u2019s grandfather, was among those in Painganadu who organised for the posters to be hung up in the village tea shop and on every lane. \u201cIt is a very proud moment for us,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have all become very active, everyone has put up signs supporting her and started reading about American politics. We have all been offering prayers for her, so I am sure she will win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harris\u2019s Indian side of the family still send financial donations to the Dharma Shastra temple in the village, and her name, alongside those of her relatives, is carved into the temple wall. The temple\u2019s administrator SV Ramanam, 71, said Harris\u2019s aunt Sarala Gopalan had asked him to perform a small prayer ritual to offer good luck for her niece. \u201cThe villagers are very elated at this news,\u201d said Ramanam.<\/p>\n

Harris\u2019s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, left India aged 19 after being offered a part-funded PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. According to Harris and her Indian relatives, Shyamala ensured that her two daughters did not lose touch with their Indian heritage despite growing up in America.<\/p>\n

Every few years Shyamala, who worked as a cancer research scientist and was also a renowned singer of traditional Carnatic music, would bring her daughters to Chennai to visit her retired grandparents, and Harris would take formative walks with her grandfather along the beach. Harris was not able to come back to India for the funeral of her grandfather, who died suddenly in 1999, but she returned to Chennai beach to scatter the ashes of her mother, who died of cancer in 2009.<\/p>\n

In a speech last week at a \u201cSouth Asians for Biden\u201d event, Harris spoke of her times in Chennai. \u201cGrowing up, my mother would take my sister Maya and me back to what was then called Madras because she wanted us to understand where she had come from and where we had ancestry,\u201d she recalled. \u201cAnd of course, she always wanted to instil in us a love of good idli.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harris\u2019s bonds with the Indian side of her family have remained tight and they all flew out to Washington for her inauguration as a senator in 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are naturally very proud,\u201d said Harris\u2019s uncle G Balachandran, 79, who lives in Delhi. \u201cThis has brought great happiness to us all in her family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Courtesy:The Guardian<\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Hannah Ellis-Petersen As a child wandering between the legs of the aunts, uncles and family friends who filled her grandparents\u2019 apartment in Chennai, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, a young Kamala Harris grew used to being addressed in Tamil. It was the main language spoken by her grandmother, who had only …<\/p>\n

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