Finding My Soul in Kathmandu

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)