29 May,2011 10:17 AM IST | | SMD team
Mamata beat the Left, India won the World Cup and Osama was shot dead. So what?
The biggest news of this year (or ever) is that after 25 years of shaping American and world opinion, the queen of daytime talk is relinquishing her throne. Oprah Winfrey has finally pulled the plug on her successful television chat show. While the impact of this momentous decision is yet to settle down, shrinks worldwide are already reporting cases of people suffering from EOS,or what they call, the Empty Oprah Syndrome.
But while the final ufffd took place, like always in Chicago on Thursday, we present to you the final ufffd that should have been -- Oprah in India. Not just that, we also give you six people who should have featured on that show.
For the tears
Member of Parliament MK Kanimozhi
You cannot have Winfrey, the lady who made crying in the mid-afternoons a planetary pastime, and not have someone break down. And because currently in India, everyone's frothing at the mouth over corruption, MK Kanimozhi fits right in.
Kanimozhi can admit guilt, sniffle over separation from her 'school-going son', and talk about a childhood trauma -- imagined or otherwise. (Oprah will of course listen attentively while she repeats, 'a-ha'). And perhaps the DMK MP would be forgiven for her indiscretions. After all, in Oprah no sin is so great that it can't be expiated by a bout of tears.
Chipko movement
Actress Mallika Sherawat
Sherawat has been on a hugging spree. In a year when she has done nothing noteworthy on screen, her hugs alone have ensured ample news space. For the record, she has hugged US prez Barack Obama and stunt superstar Jackie Chan, and almost hugged Hollywood hottiesu00a0 Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, Brooke Shields and Gwen Stefani. But if her showcase is missing one trophy, and a gigantic one at that, it is Winfrey herself. Perhaps Sherawat would be so happy at hugging Winfrey, she'd even do a Tom Cruise on the couch.
Love, sex & inspiration
Actress Elizabeth Hurley
Hurley has an interesting story to tell in that sequence of Hugh Grant-to-Arun Nayar-to-Shane Warne. But what will really whet Winfrey and her audience's appetite, while allowing the show's format to take a major leap, is moving from the how-I-lost-so-much-weight to the how-I-made-by-beer-guzzling-boyfriend-lose-weight segment. Not only did spin king Warne lose 22 pounds, he has also begun using Hurley's moisturiser.
MP to PM
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi
Surely, Rahul Gandhi will stand for the office of Prime Minister in 2013. He has been having it tough, what with calling himself a 'young leader' despite his age (he turned 40 last June) and spending the night in mudhuts. Instead, he could simply get Winfrey to endorse his candidature. After all, Oprah got Obama elected. We are not saying it. A study by the University of Maryland is. According to it, Winfrey's endorsement yielded Obama 1,015,559 votes.
An aside: She has already done plenty to please the VHP and the BJP. When she spoke against beef-eating, beef sales in the US plummeted so rapidly, cattle ranchers filed a lawsuit against her.
The Indian Rhonda Byrne
Writer Chetan Bhagat
Oprah authors. Perhaps Chetan Bhagat will be ready with an original story of how an IIM grad married a woman of another community and worked in a call centre and got a phone call from God; which can quickly be adapted into a film. If Winfrey could make an international star of Rhonda Byrne's The Secret, with lines like 'Just think thoughts of success, and you will be successful', surely Bhagat is made for much bigger things.
Mirror image
TV chat show host Simi Garewal
Winfrey is often credited with making America comfortable with having a black woman in their living rooms. Perhaps Simi Garewal could make Indians (not stereotypes) a staple with America too. Because there lurks the question, who next after Winfrey? Yes, there is Ellen DeGeneres but she hardly matches up to Winfrey's sentimentality. And when you are talking sentimentality, who better than Garewal? Yes, she will kow tow to her guests and make strange requests (she asked Shahid Kapoor to appear on her soon-to-be-aired chat show in an Indian airforce uniform, with a stuck-on moustache), but she can get a lot more weepier and have a lot more epiphanies than Oprah.
