Thulasendrapuram: ‘Kamala Harris, Chennai, 5000,’ reads a name engraved in Tamil on the board at Sri Dharmasastha Temple in Thulasendrapuram village. Showing it with immense pride, Natarajan Velar, the head priest at the temple says, “The donation was made in her (Kamala Harris) name by her sister-in-law years ago.”
A resident of Thulasendrapuram village in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvarur district, Velar and other locals are closely watching the developments in the US presidential elections.
Several thousands of kilometres away from Washington DC, this tiny hamlet has a special reason to be excited about the Democratic presidential candidate since her maternal grandfather, a civil servant, was its former resident.
“P.V.Gopalan used to live here 70 years ago. One of his daughters was the mother of Kamala Harris. They left the village,” Velar says.
Velar adds that many villagers have been performing pujas for Harris’s victory ever since US President Joe Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed his vice president as the Democratic Party’s to take on Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance.
Harris’s maternal grandfather, Gopalan used to live in an agraharam (Brahmin settlement) in the village decades ago, according to villagers.
When Harris’s mother Shyamala was a child, Gopalan relocated his family to Delhi to work for the central government. Shyamala went on to earn her doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, and became a breast cancer researcher.
It was at UC Berkeley where she met her husband and Jamaican economist Donald J. Harris. Kamala was born to the couple in 1964, and her sister Maya three years later.
In Thulasendrapuram, the temple and surroundings are still holding on to the family’s memory. Apart from an infrequent site of trees, vast lush green paddy fields greet outsiders coming here.
With a population of 3,260, most villagers are either farmers or engaged in agriculture-related professions.
As one enters the village, the tarred road leads to dusty unpaved ones on which four buses rattle to make trips every 1.5 hours to the nearest town, Mannargudi, situated 7 km away and other nearby villages including Pudukudi and Thirumakottai.
Many villagers have concerns about water shortages owing to dried-up water bodies, including the pond adjacent to the temple.
Outside the temple, a huge banner erected on the unpaved road features a laughing Kamala Harris with a caption wishing success to the ‘daughter of its soil’.
Nearly a week after US president Joe Biden endorsed Harris in the Presidential run, the village’s excitement is still palpable.
“I haven’t been able to do anything since Monday because of continuous calls. It’s either from the media or from friends who have seen the news,” says Kaliaperumal, sipping his coffee at the tea shop outside the temple. “It’s a proud moment for us.”
However, the shop owner S. Thiranvukkasu is of a different opinion. “It’s happening in the US. Her grandfather used to live here. We don’t even know if she knows about the happenings in the village. I am not even sure if all this is necessary. But people are coming here from all over the world. So, we are helping them.”
A stone’s throw away from the temple, Krishnamoorthy’s house has been abuzz with frequent visits from journalists and fellow villagers. “We are grateful to Kamala Harris because a small tiny village in Tiruvarur district near Mannargudi is now famous,” the retired SBI officer says. He adds that the villagers came to know about Harris’s connection with the village when she became vice-president to Biden in 2021.
I learned so many wonderful lessons from my grandfather during my visits to India when I was growing up, including what it means to have and to keep a democracy. His example and these lessons first inspired my interest in public service and have guided me ever since. pic.twitter.com/cd27xZnOIJ
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) August 23, 2023
“We were bursting firecrackers and distributing sweets then. Kamala Harris said she liked idli and sambar in one of the events at that time. So, we too celebrated by making the dish for thousands of villagers,” recalls J. Sudhakar, a former village president and husband of sitting village councillor, Arulmozhi Sudhakar.
Sudhakar says villagers started asking him about celebrations as soon as Biden endorsed Harris.
He now hopes that Harris will visit the village and their family temple if she wins.
“Now, the news about the village is across the media worldwide. She should have definitely come to know about it. How can she not? It’s her ancestral village. We are sure that she will visit the village and us,” he says.
However, apart from the engraving of Harris and her grandfather’s name and the occasional visit of her sister-in-law to the temple, the village doesn’t have many testimonials of Kamala Harris’s roots. “When I was eight years old, there was a ruined house here. I recently came to know that it was her grandfather’s house,” says S. Vedarathinam.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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