Saeeda Khan – My Most Embarrassing Moment
HAVE you ever set a man on fire—a living man? Well, I have—as I realized with horror at that time.
The assistant directors had insisted that it was only a dummy. For, how could they use a living person for that eerie scene in one of my films in which vultures hovered over my father’s supposedly dead body.
By the feeble light of the lantern in my hand, I discovered the body lying in a pit, the way it was described in the script. To dispose of it, I poured kerosene on the body, laid my dupatta over it and then set it on fire.
And then it happened—and it wasn’t in the script.
The flaming duppatta rose and fell right over me, as if flung by the dead man. I knew then that it couldn’t be a dummy. It was a man—a living man!
The water sprinkled on my face stung me, and I regained consciousness to see the worried faces of the members of the unit.
“How is he?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The man I set on fire.”
They brought it—the dummy! It was only a violent gust of wind, they explained amidst laughter, which lifted the burning dupatta and carried it towards me.