Kamala Harris's Indian Connections Spark a Social Media Frenzy
(Bloomberg) -- When Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris to be his running mate, 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 users 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 photos surfaced of Kamala and younger sibling Maya in saris, smilingly posing with their grandparents during a visit. Many saw Harris a step away from the White House, and the de facto Democratic Party front-runner 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!!
A prominent 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.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/kamala-harriss-indian-connections-spark-a-social-media-frenzy/ar-BB17VPms
= new reply since forum marked as read
108 is a bit much.
