Jaipur: Television chatshow queen Oprah Winfrey received a rock star's welcome when she spoke yesterday to a heaving audience of thousands of fans at the Jaipur Literature Festival in India.
Winfrey, wearing a gold and red Indian outfit, told the packed crowd that her love of books had helped her education and enabled her to rise from a poor childhood in Mississippi to become one of the world's most influential women.
"Reading is what I do for pleasure, what I do to relax myself. My ideal day is to spend a day reading a great book, and knowing I have another one to read," she said.
"At school I turned in assignments a week early to get another book. The other kids hated me," she joked, before naming Gregory David Roberts' 2003 bestseller Shantaram, which is set in Mumbai, as one of her favourite novels.
Partying with stars
Winfrey, who ended her chatshow last year after 25 years, has been in India for a week filming for her new TV channel, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). She has been photographed in Mumbai wearing a sari and partying with Bollywood film stars, visiting shanty towns and women's welfare centres, and sight-seeing at the Taj Mahal.
"It has been one of the greatest life experiences I have ever had," she said, adding that she felt "expanded, enriched and deepened" by her first trip to India.
