Author of Countryside Originals

It’s a beautiful world. If you are happy and joyful, this entire existence feels the same through you. If you exist on a plane of harmony and peace, you invite the entire cosmos to the same plane. When you smile, everything around you does the same. So be a joy-maker and see the beauty underlying everyone and everything around you. 

Look out for beautiful souls around you. They are great in their simple ways. They are exceptional and unique even while they are part of the rutted routine. But they run this world and touch our lives in constructive ways that we hardly realise. As Charles Dickens says, ‘It's not possible to know how far the influence of an amiable honest-hearted duty-going man flies out into the world; but it’s very possible to know how it has touched one’s self in going by...’ 

Through my stories, I try to positively touch the lives of my dear readers. These stories deal with common people who try to stand proud in front of their own conscience. The rest of the life’s tale naturally follows from this point. As Thoreau sums it up so beautifully: ‘Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.’

Sandeep Dahiya (Sufi) is based in the countryside of north India. Sandeep writes in different genres including fiction, non-fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry. Mr. Dahiya holds triple post-graduate degrees: Masters in English; Masters in Journalism and Mass Communication; M.Sc. Ecology and Environment. He has a decade of editorial experience with reputed academic publishers. His books include: Footsteps Lost; Verses from the Land of Farmers’ Messiah; The Night Sun; Faceless Gods; Beyond and Beneath; A Half House; Chimp, Champ and Chops; Lost in Red Mist; Ice Cubes on Desert Sands; Love: The Ultimate Alchemy; The Wicked Googly; Lazy Ways to Truth; Mists on the Moon; The Kashmiri Girl; Runaway Husbands; A Nobody's Notebook and a few more works. Sandeep managed popular blogs like Musings and Mutterings; Desi Blooms and Faceless Gods. 

Love defines the countless pathways to the cause of creation as Lord Byron points out with poetic precision: that love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.

Do you think fear, anger, hate, envy, jealousy, ego, lust and greed have their own standing? No. Just like darkness is simply an absence of light, all these tortuous tools that lynch our self are nothing but phantoms doing painful rounds in the absence of love. Like a tiny lamp puts out darkness simply by casting light, without fighting the dark, a simple ray of love, a symbol of our true self, chucks out the flimsy appendages of the unreal self.

There is definitely limit to everything in cosmos. But there is one exception: Love, prem as we say it in Hindi. 

One need not fight fear, fury, hatred, jealousy, distrust, ego, lust and greed at various fronts to defeat them. They have a common root: burial of your loving self, your essential nature, under the peripheral dust of illusions and ignorance, making you identify with what is essentially not your real self. Remove the grime, allow the light of love to emanate from your soul, enter your behavioral self, and all around you see peace, harmony and balance. 

 Corona pandemic is one of the most difficult phases in our history. It robbed many a smile from so many beautiful eyes. Streams of individual pains flooded our terrain and formed a massive river of collective miseries. However, we have to walk through the dark night to welcome a new dawn. Of course, we did it. Many fell on the perilous path. It’s a tribute to those who unfortunately couldn’t make it. It’s also for those who made it. These common man’s chronicles are in celebration of life and living against all odds.