Untitled Document

darab farooqui

	Born on 22nd of june 1975 in Jaipur, India. Now lives in Mumbai, India; is Screenplay Writer and an Actor. Before settling in movies he has done a lot of odd jobs. as he says, he neither Sad or Ecstatic, he lives in a constant state of bliss and confusion.


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	There is a small village in Himalayas, very very far away. I don’t remember the name just like all of us because that village is so forgotten; no one goes there until the local king makes his annual hunting trip to it in summers. Anyway all this is not important, actually it is important but not until later. So in that village lived a very young boy. His name was… I don’t remember his name because that’s not important, what’s important is ‘what he wanted to do’. He wanted snow in summer. Now there is a story behind that too, and I think I am going to tell you. When he was younger than as young as he was then, he has pneumonia. He nearly died of it but he didn’t, though after that he always had cold, a cold so severe that he couldn’t smell anything. Until he was 7, that summer everything changed. Everything had a smell, everything. His father was happy that now he can enjoy the joy of smell. But what did his father know. His father was poor peasant. He didn’t have land, so worked on the local king’s farm. So that summer the father and the kid were working on the fields and suddenly the boy turned to his father and asked “what’s this, coming out of my body”. The father replied “that’s your sweat”. The son curiously asked “and what’s that smell”. The father smiled and said, “That’s the fragrance of hard work”. “I don’t like it”, the son said with contempt. Father was shocked; he said “you should not talk about hard work like that”. The kid was puzzled, he said “I am not saying anything against hard work, I just don’t like the way it smells”. Father laughed, he said “ok that’s not the smell of your hard work, that’s the smell of sweat”. That’s the time the son realized that he hated sweat. And throughout the summer he hated every smell. He hated the blooms, he hated the dew on the grass, actually he hated just about everything, we love because they all smelled. Until the winter came, and with it, came the common cold. Now nothing smelled and everything was quiet. And the kid was happy again. He went to his father and asked him “what brings in the winter”. The father replied “it’s the snow”. The kid had cracked it. He knew now, he knew how to stop the summer from taking over his world, he knew what he had to do, he knew he had to conserve snow for summer. So that’s why he wanted snow in summer, actually he wanted winter in the summer. Now the big question was how to conserve snow. So he did a lot of things. He kept it in a glass bottle and sealed it. He wrapped it in a thick piece of cloth to insulate it, he saw that people sprinkled salt to melt snow so he tried to sprinkle sugar, he realized that it was the sun which was melting the snow, so he buried it in the ground, but nothing worked. He got desperate by the end winter, he was so desperate that he had pushed the cotton balls in his nostril and walked around, just to avoid the smell of the world. But nothing helped. And then came, the hunting party of king in summer. 1000 horses, 100 elephants, 5000 people, many cars and jeeps. Ok I am lying; I just wanted to give you a big picture of the whole thing. Actually there were about 4 horses, no elephants, and some people, actually nothing much, well what do you expect, these are modern times, there are no kings, these are just some decadent men living their past glories, and I don’t even know if glory is the right word. So the father and kid had to join the kings party because they were something like bonded labor. The king went hunting and when he came back the first evening, he had a bag full of game. Pheasants, partridges, quails, ducks and so on. The king called the father and told him to clean the birds and store them in the freezer he had brought along. The father sat and cleaned the meat then told his son to help him carry the birds. The kid and father went inside the king’s tent and a king’s servant took them to the freezer. It was a box not too big not too small white in color. The servant opened the door and kid couldn’t believe his eyes. He saw snow. He saw snow in deep summer. He stood there amazed until the father taped him on his head and told him to put the meat in that box. He leaned in and saw a thin film of snow inside surface of the freezer. He closed his eyes his nostrils were touched by the cold air coming out the freezer. And there it was, his cold was back in the middle of summer. Everything was quiet again. That’s night he slept like a baby, though he was a baby a few years back. So he kind of slept the way he used to sleep. Next morning the king’s men and the king went for another trip. His father went along with them. When the king came back he had another bag full of birds. Just like the last evening the father cleaned the birds and called for his son. But he was no there, so he carried all the meat to the freezer. But there was no freezer, he panicked, the servants came, everybody was puzzled, where did the freezer go. The king told his men to search for it. They knew that it could be stolen easily because it had wheels. The whole night they searched but they couldn’t find it. They couldn’t find it because the kid dragged it the whole night to highest peak next to the village. And by the break of the morning he was at the peak. He was sweating and panting so he sat down on the edge of the cliff. Then suddenly he stood up and screamed “now there will be snow in summer”. Slowly he opened the door of the freezer, it was still cold inside. A whiff of cold air came out it. The kid sat down. He had a smile on his face a smile that cannot be explained but can only be felt, he knew that he has conquered summer, he knew he had snow in summer.