https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-harris-india/one-of-our-own-indians-cheer-bidens-pick-of-kamala-harris-as-white-house-running-mate-idUSKCN2581TF

CHENNAI (Reuters) - On annual trips to India as a child, Kamala Harris would go for strolls on the humid beaches of Chennai with her maternal grandfather and his friends, listening intently as they chatted about democracy and the need to treat everyone equally.

Harris, born to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father who both immigrated to the United States to study, made history on Tuesday when U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden picked her as his vice president.

In a speech in 2018, Senator Harris recalled those early visits to her grandparents in the upscale neighbourhood of Besant Nagar, along the shores of the Bay of Bengal in southern India.

“I was not conscious of it at the time, but it was those walks on the beach with my grandfather in Besant Nagar that had a profound impact on who I am today,” Harris, now 55, said in New York.

Her grandfather, who was among millions of people who joined India’s independence movement, later became a high-ranking government official.