Saturday, December 31, 2016
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Lost in Red Mist
She
is a courtesan fighting for a respectable identity in the quagmire of
degenerated nobility, wars, intrigues, debauchery, lust and, last but not the
least, love.
She
is a foreign tourist in India, raped, picking up the fragments of her violated
self, walking with bruised honour, her innate goodness intact, to reach the
house of justice to salvage her identity, to redeem her pride.
A
circumstantial pawn in the checker-work of sex trade, she passes much of her
youth in the muck of lust only to regain herself back, to free herself in her
forties, to begin a new life.
Kashmir
is burning and in the bigger fire are smouldering little worlds of common
hopes, mundane dreams, routine aspirations and regular cravings.
He
is huge and lifts unthinkable weights for a living, goes on living and lifting
weights only to be crushed by circumstances.
On a
badly stomped platform he gathers the nameless pieces of his dusted identity to
have a name, a face, an identity of a common person from the normal world.
In
the Tsunami ravaged Andaman, she, an Australian anthropologist, survives and
looks with hope at the remnants including the sole surviving Shompen tribal.
On
the devastated eastern coast of India, he, a mere kid, takes the onerous task
of caring for his still smaller sister, while the world around seethes in
chaos.
He
dreams big from his small village, only realizing later that the dreams that
grow in disproportion to one’s circumstances are as good as nightmares.
He,
an old man staying alone with a cat, patches up the holes in his present
through tales of the past, to survive, expecting a painless end in the future.
She,
a Western tourist at Rishikesh, opens her spirits while a whole world drags
around her feet.
Friday, March 18, 2016
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Chimp, Champ and Chops
Chimp, Champ and Chops
“These
are dreamy descriptions outlining a softer humanity lying buried under the
bigger talk of inexpressibly ridiculous modernity. The truth, lying in soft and
silent spirits, gets a mouthpiece to call to attention the basic things in life
through these poems. The verses narrate the enriched anatomy of the humane self
with its soft emotions caged in rock-hard convictions. These solemnly composed
verses in poems after poems highlight the monumental charisma of inherent
beauty of the human self. The little poetic chisel strikes raise a virtuous
fragrance as they hit against the sadly spread-out rock face of human
indifference and insensitivity in present times. These true tears tell little
stories with a face moving slowly in sedate resignation. There are plaintive
tales in verse to highlight the prodigious waste of inhumanity building around.
There are inspiring anecdotes to help the humane in us to get back onto its
feet. There are murmuring complaints of human apathy about need, hunger and
deprivation scattered like dust on our shoes. There are delightfully vague
vistas that tell the stories of the nature choked at material crossroads. These
footloose fantasies take you to a world basking in balmy serenity…far away from
the zoom, boom and doom of the modern world.”Amazon buying link to get Chimp, Champ and Chops by Sandeep Dahiya
Sunday, March 13, 2016
Beyond and Beneath
Beyond and Beneath
“She is majestically inaccessible.
It’s her temperament and attitude. Her exquisitely outlined beauty always puts
her as a bright lamp burning with its calmly consistent flicker. Meanwhile,
darkness dispersed devilishly around burns with sadistic agony. She, the gypsy
beauty, is solemnly composed and the ultimately incorrigible shadows try to
chuck out this bright light. What is her fate? Even the God who put such effervescent
colours in this human form must have been feeling anxious.
Her savoir—the selfless fatherly mile at this dew-jewelled
rose—takes out his frail, feeble hands to
protect this paradisiacal delight. Is self-less paternal love of an old man
sufficient to protect her from the robust extortion of fate and its erring sons
around? He, almost unproductive deadwood, jumps back to life for a cause far
larger than his frail self.
They are against a dangerously
expanding ego. Her unhindered splendour has created ripples in religious
corridors of the ascetic. She is the culprit just for being so beautiful as to
choke the holy man’s vow of chastity. The religious man has defied his basic
instincts for so long, but now the suppressed volcano of his sexuality bursts
out at her sight. Caught in this chasm, there are silent screams of humanity as
it lost to the mundane badness of the day.”Amazon buying link to purchase Beyond and Beneath by Sandeep Dahiya
A Half House
A Half House
“It’s a tumultuous, gurgling rivulet
making noise against important issues. Tiny bits of truth beneficial for
mundane humanity have been lost in the mythical haze and fake finery of the
times. It’s an effort to dispel the smoggy veil to help the sun of truth shine
brightly for surer minds. The breezy warm pace in both fiction and creative
non-fiction tries to break many illusions plaguing us at the individual and
collective levels.
The confident metaphors portray a
fervent faith that always lurks around in our souls in lovely loneliness. These
are tersely told tit-bits of truth unearthing a bigger portion of multi-layered
reality. There are vulnerably wholesome dreams of people commoner than the
common. Anecdotes chime matter-of-factly and break the sepulchral silence. The
twisted destinies of young man and women in metropolitan India narrate the
efforts to carve out a life better than the ordinary.
Isn’t God the titular summation of
profound mysteries, glorious ambiguities, inexplicable vagaries, and celestial
certainties and uncertainties? Well, it depicts the common man hitting his head
against the concept and then kissing it again forced by circumstances. Further,
the narrative explores the misty political strains in the minds of common people as they tried to salvage their own bit of
density in the build-up of the Modi wave.”
A Half House
A Half House
“It’s a tumultuous, gurgling rivulet
making noise against important issues. Tiny bits of truth beneficial for
mundane humanity have been lost in the mythical haze and fake finery of the
times. It’s an effort to dispel the smoggy veil to help the sun of truth shine
brightly for surer minds. The breezy warm pace in both fiction and creative
non-fiction tries to break many illusions plaguing us at the individual and
collective levels.
The confident metaphors portray a
fervent faith that always lurks around in our souls in lovely loneliness. These
are tersely told tit-bits of truth unearthing a bigger portion of multi-layered
reality. There are vulnerably wholesome dreams of people commoner than the
common. Anecdotes chime matter-of-factly and break the sepulchral silence. The
twisted destinies of young man and women in metropolitan India narrate the
efforts to carve out a life better than the ordinary.
Isn’t God the titular summation of
profound mysteries, glorious ambiguities, inexplicable vagaries, and celestial
certainties and uncertainties? Well, it depicts the common man hitting his head
against the concept and then kissing it again forced by circumstances. Further,
the narrative explores the misty political strains in the minds of common people as they tried to salvage their own bit of
density in the build-up of the Modi wave.”
Friday, March 11, 2016
Friday, March 4, 2016
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Friday, February 26, 2016
Author website--Sandeep Dahiya
Sandeep Dahiya is an emerging writer, poet and blogger. Taking inspiration from his see-saw existence drawn between a traditional Haryanvi village and metropolitan Delhi, he mediates to carve out a reliable identity from the two opposing worlds. He holds a decade of editorial experience with reputed academic publishers in the country. His works include: Footsteps Lost (Minerva Press); Verses from the Land of Farmers’ Messiah (ABC Publishers); A Half House (Invincible Publishers); Beyond and Beneath (Invincible Publishers); Chimp, Champ and Chops (Invincible Publishers).
Sandeep Dahiya grew up at a village in Sonipat district of Haryana. Having his education in a village school and graduating from a small town college, he just did marginally better than other students and dreamt big. Moving further he completed M Sc in Ecology and Environment, and Masters in Journalism and Mass Communication. His teachers at the small village school thought he could become an IAS officer. However, during summer vacations in Shimla, a lady official who decided the best travelogue prize for the camping students made a still better remark that he could write. He remembered it all the way while he tried his best for the IAS and the PCS.
Coming from that part of north Indian countryside, where literature will be the last thing on anybody’s mind, where agriculture is culture itself, where perhaps people would prefer a buffalo over a book, he tried to be the black sheep that is trying to get out of the herd to set its own offbeat course. Following a self-possessed and self-nourished dream comes with its own set of trials and tribulations. More than once he abandoned the dream of full time writing. Many a time he realised his limitations as a writer. Still many more times he felt himself a victim of the forces beyond his control. Having spent a decade in the editorial departments of academic publishers, he gets up again to try further and get a slippery foothold led by the anticipating whispers of the inherent voice.
He fought for the most prestigious civil services examination in India. Fought decently well also, given his own limitations and more importantly the literary limitations of the socio-cultural unit he came from in the village in Haryana. The harder he worked, the more distant became the goals. He saw the worst of politico-bureaucratic-judicial game. When he finally fell his inner voice told him, it is more on account of the system’s failure than his own. So he has sips of justice in the form of inner thumbs-up by his soul.
Every time he falls, deeper are the analytical impressions on the neurons of his brain; graver have been the bruises on heart. If nothing more, it gives him the mood and inclination to write. Churning out reflections and sentiments that life’s thousand catapults give to all of us uniquely, Sandeep Dahiya writes to basically satisfy the inner cravings, and more importantly to create scenes and visualisations for a better world both for himself and the larger cause of humanity.Author website-Sandeep Dahiya
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