Book Description

Above all else, Sushant Thapa’s Finding My Soul in Kathmandu is a book of wandering, a pilgrimage of the soul. The author also partakes in literal wanderings as he travels the country on planes and buses, strolls the streets of Kathmandu filled with water and bread sellers, walks in his garden and embarks on a personal pilgrimage as in the poem A New Day. Sushant Thapa’s writing is both reflectively philosophical and filled with a sensual immediacy dominated by recurring flower motifs, the music of Patti Smith and Lana Del Rey as well as jazz. Flowers and fragrance ooze out of the pages where the author notes “the color of devotion/Makes me open my eyes. In the poem I Am a Flower, Mr. Thapa puts forth the notion of living one’s life as an offered exultation to God where the author proclaims: “I make your sky more colorful/I make your sunset more purple.” In other poems, flowers are used as bookmarks and their fragrance enjoyed, in others such as the poem Being a Teacher, the teacher sees his students as “Bright bulbs of brilliance” – instruments of growth and guidance. In fact, childhood experience is another prominent feature of this book whether it be the author’s own, that of his students, or that of his young niece as in the poem Sketch of Myself. There is also an underlying tension in the book with a subtle backdrop of war, as well as a sometimes uneasy dependence or wrestling of modernity with tradition, as in the title poem of the book where “The birth of modernity/Rests on the shoulders of enthralling/Traditions.” The writing itself is very fluid, mirroring the constant presence of water throughout and one gets the idea that Sushant Thapa has not only found his soul in Kathmandu, but has taken you along on his wonderfully vibrant journey of sensual longing. - Ryan Quinn Flanagan (Author of Kiss the Heathens) Sushant Thapa’s poems in Finding My Soul in Kathmandu are “a bouquet of togetherness, spreading happiness”, “The beauty of survival is in trying to be beautiful”, thus says this young poet from Nepal. I found his words surviving on the relentless pursuit of justice, and love. When the feverish dreams that he talks about, are over, and the self is no longer incarcerated, we hear the soft soothing notes of the nightingale singing of freedom. In a nutshell, his words try to script a saga of peace, exhorting us to row our boats of life, sensitively and soulfully. - Dr. Santosh Bakaya