Oprah's
Next Chapter: India
captured for posterity by TLC and Discovery is simply stunning. In
all the wrong ways. Take the moment when she walks, (or staggers, her
weight has become impossible for her to handle in more ways than
one), through a Bombay slum, holding on to people with both hands,
and acting as though she has never in her life seen a one-room home.
In fact, going by her rather incredible (as in hard to believe)
dialogue, it's as though she has just gingerly stepped out of a
spaceship and onto an alien planet. Where no woman has gone before,
as is the perennial Oprah motif, of course.
Now
before going further let me just say I am an Oprah believer. She has
a great deal of charm and empathy. She is also still innocent in many
ways; she gasps when meeting celebs and genuinely enjoys giving away
her money and her time to people and causes she believes in.
Unfortunately, she also believes it's all given her a certain moral
authority that no one will dare question. She doesn't know Indians.
Ever
since her two-episode show aired this week, the dark faces have been
asking dark questions. Did she really wonder if Bombay slum-dwellers
had microwaves? Or looked for a shower head in the shack where people
bathed? Could she possibly have lifted her foot and measured the
width of a man's dwelling which he shared with his wife and three
children, then gone on to ask them if they were happy? Could she
honestly have listened with a straight face while Dee-pack (is he
related to Tupac?) Chopra blathered on about whatever it is he
blathers on about? Perhaps how to be spiritually connected to God
within and without by scratching our left ankles with our right toes
or whatever?
*****
Aside:
*Surely
anyone who believes in God (and marriage) is simply not evolved
enough? Maybe anyone who does should try and hide it so the rest of
us don't know
that they are simply not evolved enough?
*She
can't say Deepak but we can say Oprah?
*Are
there showerheads in African shacks?
*****
Oprah
then visited some random rich person's house where she *gasp* ate
with her hands, and moved on to the 'party of the year' (in her own
words) which Bollywood tantalisingly attended, giving viewers
peekaboos of themselves while Oprah's cameraman acted like marathon
man.
She
visited the Bachchans and the Taj Mahal (one and the same to her by
the sound of it, larger-than-life and looking down at us lesser
mortals. Perhaps the Taj was more accessible; the Bachchans wouldn't
even let Oprah's camera crew past their hallowed doors). And both
took about five seconds of screen time where she told us nothing and
we learned nothing. Who is this and what have they done with Oprah,
in other words.
Everywhere
she went, she was treated like a visiting dignitary. I like Oprah but
I don't mistake her for Obama.
She
then ended it all by telling us something we didn't know: “India is
a paradox.”
Here
is a list of adjectives her researcher/advisor should read up on:
Inexplicable
Maddening
Lawless
Gorgeous
Green
Overwhelming
Changeless
Rich
Real
Raw.
I
hope Oprah's next chapter is....from 'Shantaram'. Author Gregory
David Roberts, her host during the slumwalk, at least had something
to say about this giant, unwieldy, mesmerising country of ours.
See,
that's another three words she could have used.
