Once there was a mommy and a daddy who loved each other very much.

The Daddy's name was Donald J -- wait hold on, I know what you're thinking, but don't hit the back arrow on your browser yet. As a child he was

an
African
American
Anglican
Acolyte.

OK well, that's not quite correct: he grew up in Jamaica. He was a charismatic Marxist and he would later go on to develop a program on

Alternative
Analytic
Approaches

in Economics. And his last name was... Harris.

The Mommy's name was Shyamala. Hailing from Tamil Nadu in India, she was a talented singer. When she was a teenager she won a national Indian competition in Carnatic music.

Shyamala was not shy. She was a

super
short
sandaled
sari-
sashaying
scientist.


Shyamala and Donald J. Harris met in the fall of 1962 at an off-campus event at UC Berkeley where Donald, a Ph.D. student, was speaking about similarities between his native Jamaica and the US.

Well you guessed it. Shyamala and Donald fell in love. Two years later, on a beautiful October day, out popped Kamala!

Kamala knew from the moment she was born that she was destined for greatness. She would never be short, like her mother. That would never do. So Kamala ate voraciously.

Cute little puppies were all around UC Berkeley where Kamala and her younger sister Maya grew up. The thing no one could ever figure out was why the puppies never stayed around for long. They just kept disappearing.

Sometimes a pile of hair would just show up in a corner of the playroom.

Other times, it might be little puppy ears.

It wouldn't be until much later that everyone realized that Kamala was eating the puppies. What they HAD noticed at the time was that Kamala was very talented at singing to them. And they were just infatuated with her. She was black AND Indian AND she spoke their language! What more could a puppy ask for? She was even part Brahmin. Maybe if they basked in her greatness, they would get special treatment from the other puppies.

Kamala's Daddy, Donald, was the first to notice that Kamala was getting taller and the puppies were getting fewer. Every few days he would wake up in the morning to see that Kamala had shot up again, and another puppy was missing. The writing was already on the wall.

One day, Kamala woke up another inch taller and her Daddy was gone.