Sobia Khatoon
Read, read, read. Read everything–trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, through it out of the window.”
(William Faulkner, American writer and noble laureate).
It has to be said that contemporary Kashmiri English writing seems to have been significantly influenced by the specific historical conditions of Kashmir pertaining to the conflict than the writing in other languages.
There is no way to demean the artistic or literary features in these writings which have retained the literary purity amidst all the topicality. On the contrary, it supposedly suggests a general historical reality wherein a literary culture is born and bred among certain specific historical and material conditions— conflict and violence in this case.
Insignificant ways, these writings provide witness to many profound issues like identity, justice, struggle, and oppression which are usually absent in the mainstream narratives of Kashmir. In doing so, these writings provide an alternative and heterogeneous account of a reality that seems to counter the view of the mainstream discourses that neglect very basic and yet very important facets of Kashmir’s reality and experience.
In the list of the budding writers from the region who have come to the delight of book lovers, Saraf Ali Bhat, known for his book ” Triggered Sorrows” became the first Kashmiri to bag the Readers Choice Award.
Saraf Ali Bhat is a publisher turned author cum computer science student at SSM College of engineering and technology and runs a publishing house which goes by the name, Helping Hands Publishing House which publishes and ships book globally.
As a student who left home, he believes that books written for a cause prove to be productive and create a great impact. Saraf wrote his debut book, Smile worth a billion poems and the synopsis of the book was revealed from his real-life experiences. Soon he wrote, Triggered Sorrows which helped him bag the first rank in the self-help category of the Readers Choice Awards 2019. Triggered Sorrow is a book by an ordinary student, the story of his adapting the changes, accepting the challenges while going to a new city alone, managing his family by frequent visits to the home.
He realized that there was no other world as his family. He found himself guilty. The book gives readers an insight into not only his struggle but a get a vision of the struggle that most of us face while leaving our families and homes for the sake of our career and livelihoods.
“In my writing journey, I faced a lot of rejections about the particular genre I wrote about. Not letting other beings to go through the same, I thereby decided to publish the works of those unheard voices that were truly worthwhile. I came up all alone with no one as a part of it but lately had a good helping team among whom Cealice, an Alaskan book reviewer is a part”, Saraf said when asked about his literary experience.
Aiman Khan, a passionate reader after reading triggered sorrows wrote to Saraf, ” I am a reader & I believe the purpose of reading is incomplete unless you let the author know about your reading experience. Triggered Sorrows is such an honest read. I could actually feel the sincerity in each chapter, in each sentence & in each word said. It felt like you yourself were narrating the story in person. Great imagination & description skills, you’ve got. I know, you edit your work as required. Also, I believe you could describe more wherever necessary. May you always write as sincerely as you’ve done.”
Triggered sorrows is an extremely ordinary book, which gives a reader ease to read and an ability to imagine the struggles and miseries and even adventures that a person faces while being away from his home. Home- where he’s brought up and where he’s made capable of doing all the things that he wishes to do. It’s not only Saraf who could be termed as homesick after one goes through his work, but it’s me who would feel the same and it’s those hundreds of people who would have the damn same feeling after leaving their homes.
Triggered sorrows is to all those people who want to pour the miseries of their hearts in front of the world.
Saraf sets inspiration for those hundreds and thousands of Kashmiris who want to write and publish. Those thousands of Kashmiris who have fallen in love and want to write about it and spread the sacredness of love. Those thousands of Kashmiris who have achieved in their lives and want to inspire more people by those achievements.
Maybe the readers here still won’t believe that he is the very first Kashmiri to win a reader’s choice award and the first thing they would do would be to google it.
Even I couldn’t believe this and I had to google and after getting proof of the same, I feel regret over the pity things that are being over-exaggerated in the media and the things that could inspire a good part of the population remains unknown and unleashed.
“I am Saraf, an ordinary boy, who was sent by HIS grace to this wide universe to play the character of a son, a brother, friend of a friend and maybe have to play another character one day”, Saraf Ali Bhat in Triggered Sorrows.
The author is a student at SRM Welkin Sopore and can be mailed on ([email protected])
