Hordes throng litfest, Oprah delights

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Fans of Oprah Winfrey cheer at the Jaipur Literature Festival on Sunday. — AP

Sunday was Sant Kabir’s lucky day. Not once in recent decades has he had such a large, enthusiastic and captive audience for his dohas as he got that morning, at the Jaipur Literature Festival. His session began at 10 am, but since 7 am, women, some men, young girls and boys with cameras from across the country had been sitting patiently, almost devotedly, but not to listen to profundities on Kabir by a five-member panel of intellectuals. They were there for the next session that was scheduled at the same venue — “O”: Oprah in Jaipur.
In the huge lawn of Hotel Diggi Palace, the early birds got seats, the rest sat cross-legged or on their knees on the floor — there were people in the aisles, between rows of chairs, anywhere where there was space. Despite the short skirts, low-waist jeans and creaking bones, no one got up for three hours — not to pee, not for tea, not for the love of God or old acquaintances.
The gender proportion was skewed, women outnumbered the men. One girl held a lovingly made poster with Oprah’s collage and a message: “I have waited 10 years for a minute of your time”.
Many women had waited much longer to meet their BFF, Oprah. She had been there with them during their teens, talking about love, sexual abuse and obesity. She had been there when they got married — discussing the big day, in-laws, children, homes. She had been with them when the children left, when frown lines deepened, when husbands died or marriages became loveless. Their concerns were hers. She had wept with them, shouted for them, and ever so often, on many idle afternoons, when they were down and out, she had given them a hug and said, “It’s ok. You are awesome.”
Usually, dream meetings with celebrities you have loved all your life end up being disappointing. But not with this celebrity, and not for this crowd.
Oprah arrived on stage hands folded, smiling and saying namaste. She connected instantly. Though ostensibly at the litfest to discuss her book club, that topic came up last, and briefly. Few were there to listen to Oprah talk about books. They wanted her to talk about herself, they wanted to know what she had been doing in India, who she had met and what she thought of India. NDTV’s Barkha Dutt knew this and that’s how she conducted the interview, often out-Ophraing Oprah. Two “empresses of empathy” were on the stage, and it was a ladies’ only show all along.
Oprah began from the beginning: “I keep a ‘vision board’ in my bathroom. The first vision board that I started was to get Barack Obama elected... everyday I’d say (folded hands, looking up) ‘Barack Obama President, Barack Obama President’. This was in 2007. After Barack Obama won, I put a picture of a woman on a camel, underneath it said, ‘Come to India’.” Her India visit, Oprah said, was prompted by Deepak Chopra, and then it expanded to shooting episodes of her new TV series.
For her TV show, she dropped in on many families — in slums, in small one-room homes and in huge, glamorous bungalows — where she was touched to see little temples and four generations living together. Oprah, always a crowd pleaser, drew hoots and claps when she ended this segment with, “This is a country that has no respect for nursing homes because you take care of your family.”
But Oprah was not put on this earth only to please. She believes she is a change agent. “I have taken it as my responsibility to be a connector to the human heart space”, she said, and to fulfil this calling she found a cause in Vrindavan. “Meeting the widows,” she said, “caused a shift in my consciousness” and she and her friends have decided to “combine their efforts to make sure that this kind of thing gets eradicated from the world”. Women cheered and believed that it would be done.
Oprah talked about her favourite living author, Toni Morrison, about educating girls, about sexual abuse, about Barack Obama whom she loves and feels “very strongly that he will remain in office”. She delighted the audience with animated banter about crazy traffic and donkeys on Indian roads, and touched them when she spoke of the calm, karma and love, especially at the Taj Mahal, underlying the chaos. As Oprah got up to leave, the crowd screamed, “Please come back”. “I will come back and ride a camel,” she shouted back.
Sant Kabir would approve.