According to me both writers and readers should get to know him. They should perceive him as an inspiration and love him. I know what he has been doing would make so many people reluctant to feature him and I want to be the first. However, this is not a promotional feature, this is what I believe. He is one of the youngest authors of Kashmir.
Saraf Ali Bhat. He has come up with two of his books namely A smile worth a billion poems and Triggered sorrows. These depict his love and passion and this way he takes us on the nostalgic ride of his own journey. Saraf Ali Bhat belongs to Kaldabal, Pampore. Besides being an author of these beautiful books, the 20-year old boy has also started his publishing house.
This reflects his terrific passion and love for writing leads and thus he stands the owner of publishing store. This is the only publishing house to publish the work and dreams of people without any cost. And it has got its name Helping Hands. This is the thing that makes it different from a whole crowd. I always wonder how beautiful, lovely and contended his heart must be. So far he has published six dreams and I wish I could be the first though this is not possible now.
My heart also wants peace and seclusion and I want to be next him. Of course he is not earning rather spending. Spending in the way to let people succeed in their dreams who suffer economic brutalities as their hindrance. I won’t say like I have struggled to reach him or talk to him because this could have only sense if people had acknowledged him as a so called celebrity. Everybody is dumb just like me by not turning him in a star yet. So, I felt no difficulty to reach him. Even without an introduction I asked him why he is doing it.
He understood I was talking about his ‘ helping hand ‘. He said “Kashmir is a place where people especially youngsters can create history but due to violence and unrest they are not able to. I am not running a business neither I want to run it as my business. I don’t want people to give up their dreams if only they are not able to pay”. My heart found peace and excitement grew listening and believing him.
I know a bunch of people who want their dreams to get fulfilled but are asked to pay bucks and if they possess enough of them, their parents don’t want them to spend in this way of fulfilling their dreams. I bothered him again and asked about his experience of being an author. “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. Being unaware of what a published author stands for I first wrote as I wanted to but then came to know that writing is not only about what we want to write it’s also about what readers want to read,” Saraf said.
“I don’t know of others but yes publishing journey starts with receiving, reviewing and refining the manuscripts one is likely to get so their house publishes at its best. Speaking on my behalf as a writer I just am not satisfied with the costly packages most of the publishing houses come up with”. Luck didn’t favour me going to the place where a Muslim wants to die, where Moses and as great Prophets desired to be born.
Still I’ve been to places of values and norms.. I’ve visited almost all the Sufi shrines who there and then kept spreading love by their religious approach. I’ve been always inspired by what they did and what they wrote,” he added. I am stuck in fascination and sadness that I experienced while I came to know about him. I feel so unfortunate that the love and passion to whom he dedicates have failed to recognize him. I discovered he only talked about the Alaskan book reviewer and not any other person living around him.
12:46Saraf is a computer science student managing his studies, his own musings, fighting spending to see a smile on the face of dreamers who dream their name to be on the cover page of the book which they write with love, emotions and memories poured by their pen. Saraf wants to spread the love of writing and slogan of helping hand publishing, the voice of unpublished, unheard, makes people think how passionate he is not only for writing but about anything. We live at such a place on earth where sufferings are major part of our lives, where dreams get shattered and hearts broke.
Yet people like Saraf truly turn out to be an inspiration. There are people like Saraf but unfortunately they are also yet to be acknowledged, to be loved and to be called brightening, enlightening star . And here again I am repeating that I had never thought of being inspired by a boy who is not elder to me . “Working with ‘helping hand publishing’ was best experience of my life. The way this team supported me, my interests, my values , they are truly and highly appreciable.
They didn’t publish my book or my poems but my dream and desires got published. Helping Hand is not just a name, its actually a hand that’s helping people like me ” said Soliha Bashir, author of ‘Obsolete’ – the poem market Having read his Triggered Sorrows, Aiman Khan wrote to Saraf, “I am a reader and 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 extraordinary book, which gives a reader an 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,
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 its 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 an 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. Even I couldn’t believe this and I had to google and after getting a 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 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 friend and maybe have to play an another character one day”, Saraf Ali Bhat in Triggered Sorrows.