Srinagar: California based video-sharing website, YouTube, has recognized a Kashmiri comedy group whose video channel – Kashmiri Kalkharabs – has crossed 100k subscriber mark on the video-sharing social media platform.
In its latest video, the members of the Kashmir Kalkharabs group thanked its audience while showcasing the gift it received – ‘Silver Button’ – as a token of appreciation from the management of YouTube.
“You were asking us why we did not receive the Silver Button even when we have got 136k subscriptions on our YouTube channel,” said one of the members of the group. “Here it is and it is because of your support and appreciation of our work.” His colleague thanked Allah before asking its audience to continue to pour its support in future as well.
The group which produces and shares their videos on their YouTube channel is the first loose-institution of a kind in Jammu and Kashmir to cross one hundred thousand subscribers mark that too in a single year.
The Silver Play Button is a reward for the YouTube channels that surpass 100,000 subscriber mark.
Named “Kashmiri Kalkharabs”, broadly translated as crazy Kashmiris, the group consists of eight unemployed youth who themselves act and self-produce videos on different themes concerning daily life in Kashmir. It has earned them a huge fan following across the valley.
Hailing from Panzinara, a sub-urban area nearly 15 kilometres away from Lal Chowk, the youngsters enact in the typical local getup. They create small humorous videos, conversed in the Kashmiri language. Most of the videos have a social message.
“I started this channel a year ago,” said 26-year-old Parveez Ahmad Bhat, founder of the channel. A graduate from Amar Singh College Srinagar, Bhat couldn’t find a good job and thus started the channel. “Because of unemployment I started the YouTube Channel but didn’t know at that time how to go ahead with it.”
He was supported by his friends who like him were educated but unemployed.
Showkat Ahmad Mir, a History postgraduate started working with him and they began to shoot the videos with the help of other friends. “We didn’t have any serious plan,” Bhat, who plays the protagonist in the videos, said. “It was just normal experimentation.”
In the group, no one has got formal training about what they are doing. They shoot video on phone and edit it. “We are self-taught,” Bhat confided.
After becoming first YouTube channel in the Jammu and Kashmir to cross 100 thousand subscribers, the group has “started working seriously”.
“Now, we hold meetings where we discuss ideas and then we go for shoots in our locality,” he informed. “And we have started earning money from these videos as well,” excited Bhat told TWP.
These videos have also made them celebrities, locally.
“We receive a lot of love from people. People contact us almost on the everyday basis and appreciate our work. We had not expected this much,” Bhat asserted. “People tell us we have brought happiness in their lives.”
The group said they want to entertain people and it gives them happiness. It is almost after every one week, the “Kashmiri Kalkharabs” come up with a new video.
Bhat said after winning “Silver Button” from YouTube, “we are trying to improve upon our work”.
“We are happy to receive the Silver Button. Our hard work has paid us. Now we will start shooting videos on DSLR camera and will try to improve the quality of our work,” he said. “We are looking for Gold Button, Insha Allah!”
The videos on their YouTube channel thousands of views and currently, the channel has got more than 136000 subscribers.
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