Scramble for Oprah show

It's not every day that the big ‘O' of the TV world turns up at a literary gathering in an Indian city to talk about her life and experiences.

But Sunday was not any other day and the queues stretched right up to the road leading to the venue of Jaipur Literature Festival as hundreds of people waited for their turn at the security checkpoints since early morning.

After all, they were about to see the world's most celebrated talk show host Oprah Winfrey in person.

The crowd did lose its patience but only when they were stopped briefly at the entrance as the organisers tried to figure out how many people could fit in for the Oprah show.

The media moghul, who has been in Jaipur shooting for her TV programme for the past two days, turned up at the festival wearing a yellow-green embroidered salwar paired with ankle grazing western styled pyjamas.

Her first visit to India, she said, was driven by her first image of the country — a picture featuring a woman on a camel — which she put on her visit board reading ‘Come to India'

And after witnessing first hand the “paradox” that is India, and being left “awestruck” by the traffic manners of the country, she would definitely like to return, she said.

“What most impressed me here was the family tradition in the country and the fact that you take care of your parents, your grandparents,” she said.

“Having been to a family of four generations, I got a sense of how glorious it is,” she said.

The media moghul spent time in Mumbai, visiting a slum, an ashram for widows, besides attending a high-profile dinner with Bollywood personalities before coming to Jaipur.

While she got a glimpse of both the extremes of India, she said, she would like to portray the country as a whole and not “just show the filth”.

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