If Aishwariya Can Teach Oprah, Then I Can Teach Ellen

"Do the voice a little more high status. More British-educated."

I hear the direction and clear my throat. I poise my epiglottis. I summon my inner Charu, a cousin 10 years my senior, possessing the most graceful, bird-songlike voice you could ever hear, and who had the good fortune to grow up in the Bahamas, along with so many Indian cities.

"Loook at that beeyooo-tiffel rreeng!"

Ew. I sound clunky.

"You know what? That's fine, that's fine," the creator of a brand new ethnic cartoon that I'm not supposed to talk about yet says on the iChat. "Just do me a favor. Did you see the Aishwariya interview with Oprah? Yeah. Study that." And in a flash on the laptop screen, he was gone. Poof. And click.

The cartilage flaps that can make or break a voiceover career.

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So many interviews of Ash on YouTube. There's 60 Minutes. CNNIBN. And yes, who could forget the most notorious of the bunch--the terribly awkward, in-no-way-humorous David Letterman interview from '05. It hurt back then, and it hurts me now. I even left two comments about the apparent "misunderstandings" between her and Dave's self-deprecating nature, comments which so passionately defended Americans and our sense of humor, that both seemed to be marked as spam and deleted! Alas. What a YouTube rite of passage.

But it was this impression of a "snootier" version of my cousin's voice that I was taking into my search for the not-as-famous Oprah video. I mean, when they said to do Ash, I rolled my eyes. It's so hard for me to act like someone I've...well...let's just say, lost a little liking for. Probably why I'll never make it in Hollywood, and she will.

Lo and behold. There it was. A whole 10:25 dedicated to The Most Beautiful Woman in the World meeting The Most Powerful Woman in the World. Oh my god, the universe just might collapse on itself.

Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised to see how well Aishwariya did on Ms. Winfrey's turf. She was NICE (number one thing I look for), she was elegant, and best of all, she shared with Oprah how to tie a lovely sari. Oprah was tickled. And you know only Tom Cruise and Will Smith can tickle Oprah. Now an Indian woman was doing it. I enviously watched, thinking, "Oh man! This is what I want to do with Ellen!"

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Ever since I saw Ellen crankin' that Souljaboy, I have been wanting to get The Sari (W)rap into her hands. And now I finally have the videos to do so.

I love Ellen. I have successfully impersonated her innocent demeanor and hesitant voice on MTV's Wild 'N Out and a new show for BET, so you know the African-American constituency is lovin' when I do that funny white Lesbian. You like how I capitalized Lesbian and not White? Oh, there it is.

And she's got so much soul! Not the kind that Oprah has, but the kind where she's genuinely willing to make a fool of herself in order to make the star look good. And she likes puppies. Little homeless puppies.

The Sari (W)rap video has now been seen by over 300 lucky film fest goers. It debuted at SAIFF 2007, went abroad to the UK for the 2008 Tongues on Fire Asian Women's Film Fest, and made a splash in two screenings at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles 2 weeks ago. It's now been requested by film festivals across the country, overseas in Italy, and even gotten me a special request to come to Mexico to perform it LIVE for one of their biggest film festivals, Expresion en Corto in San Miguel de Allende. Ah, don't you just love the way those words roll off of your alveolar ridge? For sure, The Sari (W)rap makes people smile and simultaneously teaches them how to tie a sari, all in rap song form. Ellen would love it.

Rasika cranks her shirt open on the set of the Sari (W)rap

Sure, sure, Aishwariya has gotten to Oprah. That's an undeniable match. The high-status. The divas. The been-through-it-alls with the media.

But then there's me and Ellen. The lighthearted. The make lemons out of Minute Maid. The silly, the quirky, the don't really fit in until we put our differences right up in people's faces--THEN they love us--kids.

It's a perfect meeting of the underdogs.

Of course, Oprah would be a dream, too. As would redeeming our culture's humility on Letterman. But I'm just sayin'. When I go to Ellen, at least I'll remember to bring a petticoat.

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