By PHIL JARRATT
Electrifying Ubud
Back in Bali. Home away from home. Sun going down outside our suite on the edge of a ravine, noise of kids bathing in the river way below, the slower pulse of life here. I breathe it in, revived.
As I write, we’ve been here just four days, this edge of town resort providing the perfect counterpoint to the crazy melee that is the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. I mentioned last week that the Indonesian Government of Joko Widodo had banned certain sessions discussing the 50th anniversary of the genocide known as “Gestapu”, and understandably this has been a major talking point among the gathered writers, academics, politicians and diplomats.
Some of my friends have been banned from speaking, but Dick Lewis, who witnessed the horrors of Klungkung in 1965 as a child, snuck through the cracks somehow, and this afternoon I listened to his descriptions of his missionary parents risking their lives to save people from the death squads, with a mixture of sadness and pride that my mate will tell his story, regardless of consequences.
And speaking of that, Patrick Burgess and I have been circling each other for decades, without actually meeting. I knew his legendary dad, the Vietnam war correspondent and knockabout journo Pat Burgess from my tyro days as a journalist in Sydney when the late Ron Saw opened all the doors for me, but Pat Jr, who has lived in Bali for years, was one of those guys everyone says you must know, but I didn’t. Until this week.
Wow! I’m in awe of this guy. Since meeting, we’ve formed a lovesick triangle, me, Patrick and Bill Finnegan of the New Yorker, mainly because we’re all surfers and there’s a macker of a swell forming right now and we want to be riding waves rather than talking. (Finnegan in fact slipped the chain this morning and phoned me from Uluwatu suggesting I skip my chat session and join him.)
But back to Burgess. He was a Sydney barrister, part-time muso and serious surfer when he decided to devote his attention to the plight of Timor Leste. By then his experience in human rights issues had put him on the radar of many UN agencies, but his passion was equalled by the girl he met in Timor, Galuh Wandita, now his wife and one of Indonesia’s most respected activists. Galuh and Patrick now run Asian Justice and Rights (AJAR) out of Bali, and work to alleviate many forms of injustice across Asia, but the story is just beginning.
Sitting in a quiet workspace in Canggu a few years ago, working for world peace between surfs, Patrick met a bald boofhead named Phil Gwynne, who was writing TV scripts. The two became friends. A few weeks later, Patrick was in Myanmar at a social justice convention when he found himself on a panel with Aung San Suu Kyi, the social democrat hero of Burma, and also possibly the sexiest 70-year-old on the planet. Suu Kyi suggested to Patrick that he should develop a television soap opera that explained human rights to Burmese. Pat’s such a cool cat that he said he would consider it, despite having no television experience.
Okay, back in Canggu, he tells Phil Gwynne that the most respected female politician in the world is willing to back a TV project. This is where it starts to sound like a joke – two Aussie scriptwriters walk into a bar in Burma etc – but the two bro down, write a treatment, and it’s up and running, the most-watched TV show in the country.
Patrick is telling me this story last week around midnight in a noisy bar in Ubud while we catch Legally Brown comedian Nazeem Hussain’s hilarious act. I probably miss a few bits of both, but next day he and Phil Gwynne present their project to an intensely interested audience, and it’s bloody brilliant. I’m sitting with old mate Arthur Karvan, from nightclub nights in Sydney long ago, and we both agree that this simple concept is so good, so worthy.
Bottom line is that Asians are largely ignorant of their legal rights, and their governments often are happy to take advantage of this. Pat and Phil’s series, The Sun, The Moon and The Truth, (the Buddha said only three things can never be hidden for long) is reaching millions of Burmese in terms they can understand, and this is just the beginning.
Regardless of whether the programmed sessions are good, bad or indifferent, it’s electrifying being at the Ubud Festival, with incredible private encounters around literally every corner. Even our government gets in on the act. We had farewell drinks with the estimable Majell Hind, our outgoing Bali consul-general, followed by lunch the next day with the incoming deputy head of the Indonesian Embassy, Justin Lee, both lively and animated occasions.
Meanwhile Finnegan, author of Barbarian Days, the first surf book to ever make top 10 on the New York Times bestseller list (the bastard!) and I are on the road, flogging our wares at fringe events in Sanur and Canggu this week. And hopefully squeezing in a few surfs.
