Happy that Kamala has scripted history: Family in Chennai

When Kamala Harris takes the oath of office as the first woman vice-president of the United States in January 2021, watching her proudly from the audience along with lakhs of other people will be her family consisting of her chithis (mother's younger sisters) and uncle from India.

“Probably, we all will go to the US,” Dr Sarala Gopalan, Kamala Harris' Chennai-based aunt, told Deccan Herald, in her first reaction to her niece's historic win in the US elections.

Read | Americans ushered new day for US: VP-elect Kamala Harris

“Of course, we are very happy that she has been able to achieve what she wanted. Not just that, she has created history by becoming the first woman V-P of the US. We are very happy for Kamala,” Dr Sarala, an obstetrician and gynaecologist based here, said.

'Kamala will call when she is free'

Since the announcement came late on Saturday night, Dr Sarala has not yet spoken to her niece. “It was quite late when the announcement was made. She will call me whenever she finds time,” Dr Sarala added.

Also read | First woman US vice president, Harris vows 'will not be the last'

Harris had spoken about her chithis more than once in the past. As she accepted the Democratic nomination for V-P in August, she said her mother had taught her to put family first.

“Family, is my husband Doug, who I met on a blind date set up by my best friend. Family is our beautiful children, Cole and Ella, who as you just heard, call me Momala. Family is my sister. Family is my best friend, my nieces and my godchildren. Family is my uncles, my aunts and my chithis,” she had said in August.

Harris' mother Dr Shyamala Gopalan went to the US at the age of 19 to pursue her higher studies and married a Jamaican Donald Harris. She divorced him ten years later and raised her children – Kamala and Maya – on her own. “My sister would have been the happiest person today if she was alive. But I am sure she is smiling from wherever she is,” Dr Sarala added.

Aunt will pray before the family deity

Dr Shyamala was the eldest of P V Gopalan's four children. While Dr Sarala and Balachandran Gopalan live in India, their other sister lives in Canada.

Gopalan, who was an Indian diplomat, had inspired Harris so deeply that the US Senator had herself recalled how the former had shaped her life, He was her greatest inspiration besides her mother, she had said

Also Read | Kamala Harris never forgot her roots, even today calls me 'chithi': Aunt recounts Biden VP pick's childhood

Dr Sarala also added that she would soon travel to her native village, Painganadu-Thulasendrapuram, 350 km from here, to offer prayers for Harris. Special poojas and abhishekams were conducted at the Dharma Sastha Aiyanar temple in the village for Harris' victory on the day the US went to the polls.

Harris had always been a person who was connected to her roots. “She (Kamala Harris) is a person who never forgets her roots and believes in family values inculcated in her by my sister. Even today, she calls me chithi (mother’s younger sister) and she has always been a caring person,” Dr Sarala had told DH in August.

‘My mother proved her critics wrong’

Harris herself had spoken about how her mother was the reason she was where she was,

“My mother, who raised me and my sister, was a proud woman. She was a brown woman. She was a woman with a heavy accent. She was a woman, who many times people would overlook her, or not take her seriously. Or because of her accent, assume things about her intelligence. Now every time my mother proved them wrong.

“Every time she proved them wrong. And because of who mother was, and what she believed, what she had the ability to dream what was possible and then work to make possible, the fact that my mother never asked anyone permission to tell her what was possible is why, within one generation, I stand here as a serious candidate for the President of United States,” she had said.