The Race Track

Four Indians have been chosen to participate in an Australian TV series that explores racism.

When Pune-based Radhika Budhwar was auditioning for the Australian show,Dumb,Drunk and Racist,through Skype in December last year,and expressing her views on Australian people,she was unaware that along with interviewer Aaron Smith,who was directing the show,she was also being watched by its producers. I could have given politically correct answers,but I spoke my mind. I think thats the reason I got selected, says the 48-year-old,a trainer for cultural sensitivity and conflict management.

Budhwar very openly told the director that until a few years ago,she used to advice students to go to Australia for studies but post 2009,when reports of Indian students facing attacks started coming in,things changed. She was one of the four Indians who are part of the six-series show,Dumb Drunk and Racist,one of the most controversial TV series in Australia,which got the second-highest viewership on June 20,when its first episode was aired.

Produced by Cordell Jigsaw for the ABC2 channel,the show sees four Indians going on a road trip across Australia with Australian TV journalist Joe Hildebrand,for a month. Owing to its topicality,the series has been covered extensively by the Australian media,and Budhwar is elated that the whole of Australia has hoardings of the show and the media there has termed them as Indian celebrities. The crew even visited her Pune house on January 26. After a shoot at her residence,they left for Mumbai,to be joined by the other three participants. Then,the gang flew to Sydney for a month-long shoot. So does she stil advise students against choosing Australia for their education? I tell them to choose Australia only if they have a Plan B ready,just in case they have to come back due to some untoward incident, she says.

Besides Budhwar,the other three participants in the documentary series include Amer Singh and Gurpreet Chowdhury from Chandigarh and Mahima Bhardwaj from Jaipur.

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