Ever since Kamala Harris—daughter to a scientist mother born in Tamil Nadu, and father from Jamaica—became the presumptive nominee for the US presidential elections, the internet has lit up with bite-sized memes and videos of her. Some of these are made by supporters of Donald Trump that seek to criticise her but really end up doing the opposite, solidifying her place, especially among female voters.
Take the memes about her so called ‘cackle’.
There’s a brilliant riposte by Kamala herself. In an interview with actor Drew Barrymore, Kamala credited her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, for her loud laugh. For us, in India, the following description is completely relatable: “I have my mother’s laugh and I grew up around a bunch of women in particular who laughed from the belly. They laughed—they would sit around the kitchen drinking their coffees, and telling big stories with big laughs,” Kamala told Barrymore. Replace the coffee with chai and that could be our masis (maternal aunts), our ammas (mothers), our aajis (grandmothers), laughing uproariously, and without apology.
Illustration: Deni Lal
Jaded cynics argue that Indians romanticising this moment are being naive and cliched. Kamala, they argue, has always chosen to give primacy to her identity as a black American over an Indian-American brown woman. And while at the level of politics, there is truth to that; Kamala’s mother has always been at the centre of all her stories. More than Kamala making dosas with Mindy Kaling, another star of the Indian diaspora, it is the backstory of Kamala’s mother that brings home her desi antecedents in a really powerful way.
Besides, as Zarna Garg, a fabulous stand-up comedian with roots in Maharashtra and Gujarat, told me, “… Just the fact that someone called Kamala or Sujata can run for president changes the games.” It’s a different matter that very few Americans can even pronounce Kamala correctly—and maybe this campaign will finally teach them how to!
More seriously, America has wrestled with structural sexism. Their inability to have a female president for all of these decades—and now their regressions on abortion laws—makes the Kamala story all the more critical. All the more when you consider that she is running against someone who has been accused of not just misogyny, but also sexual assault. In fact, more than a dozen women have publicly charged Trump with abuse or harassment. And his running mate J.D. Vance (married to an Indian American) has revealed his own bigotry, by mocking what he calls ‘childless cat ladies’.
The last time a woman in America took a shot at the White House, she was also punished for her loud laugh, her clothes, her bad hair days. There may have been many different reasons for why Hillary Clinton lost, but among the causes was deep-seated discomfort with women who are opinionated, individualistic and do not conform to societal stereotypes.
And as Garg points out, the Kamala moment is even more significant than the Hillary moment because Kamala is entirely self-made with no political familial links. “Indian aunties rule,” Garg told me, only partially joking, “and Indian uncles, you please sit down….”
Even if you hold back the urge to impose India into the Kamala story, women everywhere should be pleased. And we should laugh as loudly as our mothers and grandmothers taught us to.
editor@theweek.in