By Pankajbala R Patel
USUALLY, when something is too good to be true I don’t trust it! But this one time I will make an exception. My feelings about the new President elect of USA Joe Biden is that he is genuinely lovable, like Donald Trump never was in all his flamboyant arrogance and bravado! Life and times of the USA or America as we popularly call it have always captured the imagination of people around in the rest of the world and of course most everyone having a hard time in their own countries from A to Z reasons, not least of all political or religious tyranny, move heaven to earth to make it out to USA). My own extended Gujarati family out of Gujarat is now growing up or growing old in the US of A, UK, Europe, even Africa and around the world — anywhere but India or Bharatdesh.
That said perhaps it is early days and one should not say it but the USA’s new president commands affection and respect from many, unlike in the case of outgoing President Donald Trump (or “wannabe lunatic dictator” as one American journalist puts it, or at least amongst a wide cross-section of Americans who come in various shades of immigrant skin colors, features and genes. All as bona fide Americans as the new Vice President Kamala Harris (her mother may hail from Tamilnadu and she may go goo ga over dosa and idli but she sees herself as American first, second and forever or so to speak).
Anyway, Biden and Harris come across as two people who will probably do well in the political arena of USA and clear up the mess created by President Donald or so to speak. Both Biden and Harris have connections with India although they may or may not give a damn about it. The grapevine now has it that even Joe Biden has linkages with India courtesy the British East Indian Company. There was something in the news about him which is all around these days that his great grandfather Christopher Biden served as Chief Magistrate of Madras City for many years in 1840s. He is remembered by a plaque at the CSI St George’s Cathedral in Chennai. There is much streaming in international media currently to introduce or re-introduce President elect Joseph Biden to the world, as also Kamala Harris.
It may be remembered that the new president of USA has lived half-a-lifetime in America’s political scene itself (being a young senator) and been in the thick of it lending his aid to shape many US policies; Barack Obama describes him as “an extraordinary man of public service behind the scenes. He was President Barack Obama’s much respected and loved right hand man as vice-president.
In fact, both Obama and Biden make for a heartwarming mutual admiration twosome, also judging by how President Obama gave a most sentimental speech while awarding the prestigious President’s Medal to his vice-president Biden at the tail end of his presidentship. And now Biden is president elect who is humorously biding his time till former President Trump reconciles to his new status – no two men could be as different from each other as cheese from chalk, if I may say so!
It’s amazing how the incoming President Joe Biden’s personality, as shaped by his long years in a political career, is winning so much cheer in the eyes of the working Amrican people and he is chalking up so much goodwill also in the eyes of people across the world. It’s like Donald Trump has been forgotten overnight and his time under the political spotlight has come to an end, we are hearing all kinds of reporting of how his much younger third wife Melania is planning on a divorce from him…da, da, da!
American media print and electronic really go all out to fuel the grapevine of their leaders in public or private. Okay, I feel sorry for Donald Trump although there is really no need to feel sorry for him. I mean 73 million Americans voted for him even if a few thousand more did not! So if there are any lessons to be learned it is going to be uphill all the way and good-luck to President Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris.
Both come across as very likable, human and humane, with no ego trips and temper tantrums in their personality profile; both Biden and Harris communicate eloquently with no problem whatsoever expressing themselves and explaining to people from where they are coming vis-à-vis the good, bad or ugly. President Biden has coped with a tragic personal life losing his first wife and one of his two sons in a Christmas accident, also later on his second son to cancer. In once exchange he reveals that while President Obama had no family to lean on like he had (“in the Biden family I could never tell who was the father, often it was my second son”)…Biden has always had a family to lean on, the point being so many out there don’t. Indeed, a humble man, through long years in American politics he has learned enough to be disarmingly humble and this has gained him enormous respect.
Catch all his conversations with the media including the emotional one with activist Ady Barkan (confined to a wheelchair with ALS or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive nervous system disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, causing loss of muscle control, often also called Lou Gehrig’s disease). Ady Barkan has overcome his handicap with some amazing technological aids and is seen in a video quizzing Biden about what he will do for America’s variously handicapped community.
Replying to Ady’s questions we get a touching insight into President Biden’s own family history through its ups and downs, he confesses openly it is his second wife Jill who saved them all from perdition or something like that. Americans place great value on family life and values and Biden comes from a place bound to win many similarly inclined hearts. They know American society is besieged by conflicts and differences of opinion but both President Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris have consistently stood up for human rights first, women and children’s causes, fought racism in any form in American society. Easily accessible healthcare is also one of their top priorities once the new government is formed.
So from all accounts, America has a new president and taking cognizance of the background of President Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris (she is married to an American Jew, is quoted saying unabashedly “I love my husband so much!”) it is after a long time we are hearing good news around the world including India. May the positive cheer be infectious and hopefully there’s a clean sweep coming in for the rest of the world too in the wake of Covid-19 nightmares, lockdowns and economic despair threatening to reduce many to a new impoverished status. The new normal is still frightening to look at and everyone hopes that with the democratic win in the USA, a very sane Joe Biden will show the world a way out of diabolically stressed out situations which threaten to destroy both the world — and Mother Earth!