Oprah Winfrey (Pic: screen grab from ndtv.com)
I have been looking for a standout gig on the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) for myself. I found one this morning. Not having ever attended it, I think it is a great gig never to attend it in the future. And yet feel no compunctions whatsoever in holding forth on it.That could well be a defense mechanism going up against the fact I never get invited to such events. It is not a case of grapes being sour but grapes being non-existent.
There, with that out of the way let me say a thing or two about Oprah Winfrey’s interview by NDTV’s Barkha Dutt, India’s most high profile television anchor, at the festival. Winfrey has been in India for the past few days on her first visit, partly to shoot a chapter of a new show and partly to see for herself a country frenzied on her surface and tranquil at her core. That’s a great myth about India but it is so compelling that I will let that pass.
Mutual admiration societies have a way of forming effortlessly in the kind of convivial and salubrious setting of festivals in India. The JLF being one such festival it is not surprising that people try and put their best foot forward, unless, of course, if you happen to be Salman Rushdie. Then the foot is on your throat. But I digress.
Dutt introduced Winfrey with somewhat breathless, albeit fully deserved, praise. Winfrey in turn seemed awestruck by the fact that Dutt said all that she did without a teleprompter. My immediate thought at the exchange, admittedly churlish and sophomoric, was that from now on it has to be Barkha Winfrey and Oprah Dutt. The switch has a certain cadence to it. (Check, one more gratuitous comment out of the way).
I can review the whole interview but I think it would be sufficient to make an observation or two about a couple of points. Among the things that Winfrey says she was struck by immediately on her arrival in Mumbai (being reflective and contemplative not to mention ruminant, she noticed more profound things too) was how Indian drivers treat traffic lights.
“What is it with the red lights? I mean does the red light mean stop or not? Or is it just there for your entertainment? What is this? The light is red and everybody just keeps going. You all seem to know what you’re doing,” Winfrey said in her world famous tone of polite and amused incredulity.
I think Winfrey unwittingly raised a deep civilizational question when she wondered like Seinfeld, “What is it with the red lights?” I will tell you what the deal with the red lights is. The red light is to the the average Indian driver, of four wheelers, two wheelers, three wheelers and occasionally uni-wheelers, is what the red rag is to a bull. It is an invitation to charge and not stop. Because it is a rule, not only must it be broken but trampled upon. In laws lies the irresistible possibility and thrill of breaking them. The first instinct in India is to how to get around doing something that is mandated by law. It is a civilization that has for long had gloriously comprehensive laws on its statute books and that’s where they have mostly stayed.
Another point that Dutt touched upon was Winfrey’s visit to the widows of Vrindavan. These women are a profoundly shameful rebuke of the lofty claims of family values. These are the women who have been not just cast aside but castigated simply because their husbands died before them. Although the practice is not as widespread as it seems, it is prevalent enough to have a large number of them living in the ancient town of Vrindavan, the putative of hub of Krishna’s childhood in Uttar Pradesh. A lot has been written and filmed about this revoltingly obscurantist and abhorrent practice.
I am sure Winfrey was struck by the cruel contradiction of a country that still prides herself in her joint family system and yet tolerates the widows of Vrindavan. Answering Dutt’s question what struck her the most about her visit, Winfrey spoke of three things. One of which was the sense of family.
“The sense of family tradition..I now get it. I really get the sense of how glorious it is that this is a country that has no respect for nursing homes because you take care of your families and you don’t put your families in nursing homes,” she said.
Unless of course if you are a widow in northern parts of India, in which case you are likely to be packed off to Vrindavan to be among other widows leading this grotesquely imagined life of loneliness away from your family simply because the husband died. And without a husband what are you if not a wretched shadow of a human being shrouded in a white sari and tonsured head stewing in your own misery?
I am sure Winfrey could not square the “glorious” practice of taking care of one’s family with the widows of Vrindavan. She should not even try it because it would be like trying to understand why drivers do not stop at the red lights. They do either because they can.

