Ancestral village in Tamil Nadu celebrates Kamala Harris' feat

Villagers have been lighting fireworks and distributing sweets, while posters of Harris were pasted on the walls of the village, and children flashed placards featuring the first person of South Asian descent and the first woman to rise to the office of the US vice-president.

Far away from Washington, where Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were being sworn in as the next president and vice-president of the US, Thulasendhirapuram - Harris’s ancestral village in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvarur district - was all decked up on Wednesday for an explosion of celebrations.

Harris had struck a chord with Tamil people when she called out to her “chithis” (‘aunts’ in Tamil) during a speech in August.(File Photo)

Villagers have been lighting fireworks and distributing sweets, while posters of Harris were pasted on the walls of the village, and children flashed placards featuring the first person of South Asian descent and the first woman to rise to the office of the US vice-president.

“We feel proud, as though India has won an Olympic gold medal,” said Vinod Pulavendran, a resident of the village. “It is common for Indians to become American citizens. But how often does an Indian become the vice-president of the US? She has put us on the map.”

The Dharmasastha Temple in Thulasendhirapuram conducted a special ritual for Harris on Wednesday. Her maternal grandfather, PV Gopalan, was born in this village and her family has been offering donations to the temple. Back in 2014, Harris’s late mother Shyamala Gopalan’s younger sister, Dr Sarala Gopalan, who lives in Chennai, had donated ₹5,000 in Harris’s name to the temple.