OPRAH WINFREY, the media queen of America and the world’s only black billionaire with her Oprah effect and the story of the Oprah’s Book Club mesmerised the audience in the Jaipur literary festival on Jan22. While being interviewed by Barkha Dutt, she said: “I am my own woman.” Winfrey spoke on various issues in her usual vibrant mood and was very much confessional. She talked on Obama, marriage, Twitter and book reading. She candidly expressed her views while replying to questions on various aspects. She dislikes Twitter and feels that the time passed on Twitter can be spent more usefully by reading books. Twitter has an alcoholic effect. This is in tune with her views expressed in the television show ‘Oprah’s Book Club’.

By confessing about intimate details in the Jaipur festival, about her weight problems, tumultuous love life, sexual abuse, and crying alongside her guests, she has used her media communication known as "rapport talk" as distinguished from the "report talk". Even on politics, she is free and frank as usual. Obama, in her opinion is not God, but a man who can make mistakes. But she, at the same time hopes that Obama remains in office for a few more years.

She was herself a victim of sexual abuse, and gave birth, at the age of 14, to a boy who died shortly after. She did not marry and about marriage, she is very frank to conclude that ‘marriage is not for me’. Marriage requires some conformity and she does not conform and strongly dislikes conformity. She, however, feels that in India the situation is different.

Oprah who currently lives on "The Promised Land", her 42-acre estate with ocean and mountain views in California has not yet forgotten her hard days of childhood, which she lived in dire poverty. She was born in poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother, Winfrey .Today Oprah believes that education can eradicate poverty. Asked if she has faced criticism in the white dominated society in America, she confidently replied that she herself did not accept criticism which was not valid. This was the secret how she grew up into an independent woman.

She regards Toni Morrison as the best living author and her own favourite also. She believed in the strength of the personal self and that was enriched by divine force. The most influential woman of the world said that she got her strength from the philosophy: “I am, because we are”. She communicated everyday with millions of people and people around him are her strength as a person. Indian audience were simply moved when she said in a light mood: “My whole life is a Taj Mahal”. This is something like ‘Oprahfication’ of the Jaipur festival where she made public confession, a form of therapy. Oprah, the philanthropist who revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre captivated the attention of everyone in the festival by her plainspoken curiosity. She openly expressed her faith in God and His influence on her personal self. She mentioned Steven Spielberg’s film, The Colour Purple in which she once co-starred as distraught housewife, Sofia. She filmed an episode of her show Oprah’s Christmas Kindness, to bring attention to the plight of young children affected by poverty and AIDS. The rapport talk was enjoyed by all in the book fair in the Pink City.