Irfan Latief, a youth from Lolab along with two other youth from Baramulla, have been selected for the 29th International Snow Sculpture Championship in Breckenridge Colorado this month. Irfan says his team has been running from pillar to post to convince the government to sponsor them so that they can participate in the event.
“We are the first such team to represent India in US for this kind of event, last year we participated as well as, thankfully, a politician sponsored us. Still we had to use old uniforms and manage with fewer tools,” said Irfan, a post graduate in Visual Arts from Jamia Milia.
The invitation letter asks for sponsorship for the participation. “By means of this letter, we kindly ask you to provide any and all the assistance needed to enable the participation of the Team India in this prestigious International Snow Sculpture Championship.”
The team members said they are leaving on January 19 and so far none has come to help them.
“We have big dreams with no resources, we are partially funded for air tickets, boarding and lodging. To compensate rest of the expenses, we borrowed money from friends and relatives, now all we want is some support so that we can buy uniform and tools,” said a team member.
The Kashmiri trio said they were selected from more than 220 entries from all over world. “There were other entries from India too, they did not get selected. Since snow is part of our life and we have participated in such kind of events in Gulmarg, we easily defeated other teams across Asia,” said another team member.
“To raise sponsorship we have time and again requested the state government for suitable sponsorship. We approached the Governor on 12th of Nov and the Advisor to Governor forwarded our file but nothing was done. Had we been from any other state, they would be proud to help us as we represent our culture,” he said.
During the Breckenridge International Snow Sculpture Championships, 16 teams from around the world will compete in Colorado (US) to hand-carve with the help of only hand tools 10 feet wide, 10 feet long and 12 feet high and 25-ton blocks of snow into enormous works of art for countless hours for five days.
Three of the four team members are from Kashmir, all having degrees in graphic art, sculpture making and designing while one of the team members is from UP.
Advisor Khurshid Ahmed Ganai said, “They can visit me on Wednesday at Church Lane where I am to address public grievances. In such cases of sponsoring and funding matters, everything has to be checked properly.”