Sawt Falasteen - Prayers for Vance in wife's ancestral Indian village

Bowing before a silver cloth-wrapped idol of Sai Baba, a 19th-century guru revered as a deity by his followers, the priest seeks blessings for the Republican politician and his wife, Usha.

Vadluru, a quiet village on the banks of a canal deep in the verdant countryside of Andhra Pradesh, is the ancestral home of Vance's wife, who will become the US Second Lady -- and the first who is not white -- if Donald Trump is elected again.

"We bless her," said the priest, whose temple is in a building once owned by Usha's family, the Chilukuris.

"She should get higher positions in her life. We priests offer special prayers for Usha and her husband."

Usha's great-grandfather moved out of Vadluru, but her ancestors are respected in the village as academic highflyers and well-versed in Hindu scriptures.

Her father Chilukuri Radhakrishnan -- a PhD holder -- was brought up in Chennai and went on to study in the United States. He returned to India before the couple moved back across the Pacific, and Usha was brought up in suburban San Diego.

She met Vance at Yale Law School and the couple married in 2014. They have three children.

- Hillbilly Elegy –

Usha Vance has never visited the village, but the priest said her father last came around three years ago and checked on temple's condition.

Little is known about Radhakrishnan's initial years in the United States, but the film of Vance's memoirs, Hillbilly Elegy, refers to him coming to the country with "nothing".

Usha's character, played by Indian actor Freida Pinto, says in the 2020 movie now streaming on Netflix that her father had to "find his way".

Usha is a practising Hindu and told Fox News in a recent interview that the faith made her mother and father "good parents... really good people".

Houses in Vadluru have "Jai Sri Ram" -- "Victory to Lord Ram" written in red on their walls.

Villagers now follow the couple's campaign on Youtube and Facebook, said resident Venkata Ramanayya, 70.

"We feel very happy and proud," he said.

- US migration -

Millions of Indians have made similar journeys as the Chilukuris, and according to the most recent US census, Indians have become the country's second-largest Asian ethnicity, growing 50 percent to 4.8 million in the decade to 2020.

Trump's opponent in the November election is Kamala Harris, whose maternal grandfather hailed from Thulasendrapuram, a village surrounded by paddy fields deep in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

Harris' maternal grandfather PV Gopalan left the village decades ago, but residents say the family has maintained close links and has regularly donated to the village temple's upkeep.

Around 600 kilometres away from Vadluru, Usha's great-grandaunt Chilukuri Santhamma sat hunched over a pile of papers as she called on her relative to urge others not to follow in her family's footsteps.

Another of the family academics, at 96 she is hailed in local media as the country's oldest active professor.

She is related to Usha through her husband, an academic himself who was associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a far-right Hindu nationalist group.

Usha should use her position and legal knowledge to stop the "drain" of Indians into the United States, Santhamma said.

"They can go for education, they can go for training, all this they can do but there is a limitation. They have to stay there for known time and come back," she said.

She believes Usha has a tough life, despite being married to a "great person".

"To become the wife of a great person is the fortune," she said, but has "taken politics as her subject".

"That is a very tough one," she said.

A.Suleiman--SF-PST