Jindal's ancestral village celebrates his victory

CHANDIGARH: Celebrations erupted in Bobby Jindal's ancestral Khanpura village on Sunday over his election as Governor of the US state of Louisiana with locals distributing sweets and performing 'bhangra'.

As news trickled in that the 36-year-old Oxford-educated Jindal has won the gubernatorial race, his family members started distributing sweets in the neighbourhood.

"We are really proud that Bobby has finally made it and won the Governor's race. It's a great honour not just for our family, but Punjab and the nation as well as the son of this soil has achieved something really big," Bobby's 37-year-old cousin Gulshan Jindal told over phone from Malerkotla.

He said the entire Khanpura village, from where he said Bobby's father Amar Chand migrated to the US nearly four decades back, had erupted in joy on hearing the news.

Gulshan said since morning when television channels broke the news of Bobby's victory, villagers have been queuing up outside the various houses of the Jindal family in Khanpura, close to Malerkotla.

People of the Punjab town performed the bhangra folk dance to celebrate Bobby's victory.

Gulshan said he has faint memories of Bobby as a child. "Though we are of the same age group, we only met once when he had come to Malerkotla with his father nearly three decades back".

He said that while Amar Jindal had settled abroad, his three other brothers including the elder one Shyam Lal and two youger to him--Bhajan Lal (Gulshan's father) and Dharampal had settled in Malerkotla.

"Now, that Bobby has registered an impressive win in the gubernatorial poll defeating his opponents, we want that he should find time and visit his ancestral village. It will be a great occasion for all of us," said Gulshan, who runs a small business here.
 
Bobby's another cousin, Subhash Jindal, who is also settled in Malerkotla, said it was a "big day" for the entire family.
 
"He may be thousands of miles away from us, but today we feel like he is amongst us," said Subhash.

He said Bobby's father, who graduated with an enginnering degree from Guru Nanak Dev University, while his mother Raj who was a lecturer, decided to immigrate to US in
the early 1970s.

"Both Bobby and his younger brother, Naresh, were born in the United States," he says, recalling that Bobby has "always been proud of his humble background".