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Does Kamala Harris have children? Indians eager to know

International Desk
20 Jan 2021 18:53:42 | Update: 20 Jan 2021 18:53:42
Does Kamala Harris have children? Indians eager to know
Kamala Harris is all set to script history as the first woman, first Black and first Indian-American Vice President. But Indians are more interested in her personal life.

This inference can be drawn from an analysis of a Google Trends search with India as the location over the past one week, which showed the top result was 'Does Kamala Harris have children'.

'Kamala Harris children', 'Kamala Harris husband', 'Kamala Harris step-children -- were some of the other things Indians had searched for during the same period. Even the 'Kamala Harris nude' phrase witnessed a 300% spike in Google searches.

Harris is a step-mother to her attorney-husband Doug Emhoff's two children from his earlier marriage.

Harris has a deep connection with India, which she has often reflected on. Her mother,  Shyamala Gopalan, was born in Thulasenthirapuram, barely 300 km from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu's capital Chennai

Gopalan later relocated to the US to pursue her research in her field of study -- breast cancer. At the University of Berkeley, Gopalan met and married economist Donald Harris, from Jamaica.

In several of her interviews, Harris has credited her Indian-American mother Shyamala Gopalan for instilling in her the sense of responsibility "that motivated my political career". 

Even in her memoir, Harris wrote, “There is no title or honour on Earth I’ll treasure more than to say I am Shyamala Gopalan Harris’s daughter. That is the truth I hold dearest of all."

Days before the US presidential election last year, Harris listed idli and "really good sambar" and "any kind of tikka" as her favourite Indian dishes. "So South Indian, it would be idli with... a really good sambar, and then North Indian -- probably any kind of tikka (meat ball)."

Idli,  a savoury rice cake popular in southern India, is produced by steaming a batter consisting of fermented black lentils and rice. Sambhar is lentil soup.

On the US election day, Harris ancestral village in southern India prayed for her. Free idli and sambhar were also distributed to all residents of the village on that day.

On August 11, 2020, the 56-year-old US senator from California became the first woman of colour and the first person of Indian origin to be nominated as the Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden's running for the elections later that year.

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