Who knows! May be a sex craze Australian went for a cheap sex tour in Asia under the guise of “I love Asia and I am the liberator of Asia”!! His Asian photographer girlfriend/partner could have shed some light about this issue. Surprisingly she was absent at the screening night. Many of his subjects (photographs) are not well- known to him and he was not well informed about a few events from his own documentary.
In the documentary Philip ostracised sleepy Chinese mountainous town officials for their failure to provide a “Taj Mahal ” for an unknown Australian photo artist. He also crucified the Chinese workers and their work ethics in that segment!
At the Sydney Hoyts Cinema complex when I expressed my opinion about the documentary both David and Philip were not happy with me and both of them failed to address my concerns properly.
However, a few minutes later my friend who was sitting next to me and personally knows both Philip and David asked a question. At that time my friend made a light hearted reference about me along the lines of “my Bangladeshi friend …. “.
That broke the camel’s back! Volcanic lava erupted!! Philip seized on this, realized I was from Bangladesh and then he jumped on me by saying, “I have been to Dhaka recently. People earn $1.00 a day over there, if I ask any of you to live in Bangladesh for a week – most of you will commit suicide, …“. My suspicion about Philip developed further and I waited to talk to him personally to clear the air.
My friend Jeff introduced me to Philip. I said, “Philip are you a Clive of India or what”? He had a dumb look on his face. My friend translated the terminology to him.
I could have said, “you are talking about the slums of Dhaka and you know nothing about those millionaires and billionaires of that country. The wellbeing and happiness level of Bangladesh is better than Australia. Most importantly despite the level of material affluence of Australia, comparatively more of us in Australia commit suicide than the Bangladeshis. Only 55 126 square miles area of Bangladesh is providing food and shelter to 160 million people. The Bangladeshi born teachers, doctors, engineers and people of many other walks of life are quietly providing service to almost every countries of the world. They are not demanding compensation for the British Holocaust in Bengal” But I have chosen to avoid an unnecessary verbal wrestle as such that wrestle or tussle is neither productive nor constructive.
I continued: “You see the old Raj used to produce opium at Bihar, processed them at Calcutta near the bank of the river Ganges. Then they used to ship them to China for profit as well as to destroy the Chinese. Similarly, during the Vietnam conflict the different type of “Raj” used to produce drugs at the Golden Triangle, ship them to America and Europe through soldiers’ body bags. They wanted to kill two birds with one stone! They thought the smart blacks in America would become the drug dealers and dumb blacks would become the drug users! Thus in a way the entire black problem would be tackled easily. However, their plan backfired. Yet, they refuse to learn any lesson! In the recent past the bad guys i.e. the Talibans managed to remove 98% drugs from Afghanistan. I say this without offering any moral support to the Talibans. To our surprise, under the protection of the good democratic and humanitarian western forces 97% of world opium is now produced in Afghanistan. Things haven’t changed! Have they?”
Philip was ducking for cover. Nonetheless, we had a few agreements over a number of issues and we parted amicably.
We spoke to a few more people and I am asking myself is Philip a sex tourist or an Asian lover as he would like us to believe? Should the people of Bangladesh and of Bangladeshi origin in Australia demand an apology from Philip?
