Book Review
Shankar Babu Acharya
Under the Country's Pillow Bhimsen Thapa's Suicide Note
At the time when Nepalese literature is undergoing hard time in the genre of poetry, with the publication of When Paiyu Starts Blossoming (1995), Fireflies are Climbing Down (1998) and in 2003 Flower's Storm At the Remote Height, poet Momila has been busying herself in creating and coordinating parallelly in the field of literature. In this row, Momila's latest creation Bhimsen Thapa's Suicide Note has been published in 2014. The anthology includes 32 poems of various subjects and themes, and created in different time and circumstance like a gorgeous garland of hundreds of different flowers. Poet has strongly advocated her voices of human values and traditions, social consciousness, quest for freedom, desire for social progress, and against gender discrimination through her poems. Her poems, written in fine language-setting, and made charismatic with poetic themes, flow through the pages like a swift-flowing river. Her poems are not merely poems but each poem carries a theme, a philosophy. So more you dive into the depth of her poems, more you get.
In some poems, Momila discharges love, in others she appears in the form of tears for human suffering. In some poems, her female consciousness becomes predominant and she stands against male arrogance, and expresses her inner quest for freedom. She has also penned about natural beauty, consequences of conflict, discrimination, natural calamities and several other inharmonious situations. Though several titles of her poems incorporate the pain, cry and lamentation, her each poem has positive feelings similar to saying - every cloud has a silver lining.
The poems should be free from arrogance. They should create ethical boundaries. The poems should not be for the sake of poems, but it should pave the way for social progress. She has proved her aforementioned statements through her poems.
In 'You and I', she has explicitly elucidated the human truth that only the significant union of men and women makes the world and human being beautiful, and for this meaningful union, both should discard the pride and arrogance.
Thus,
On the day when our distance of arrogance breaks,
Aha! Meet at the confluence and flow together.
Momila, who believes strongly that to love and to write poems are alike, is overwhelmed with 'love' in her poems - sometimes in the form of human love between men and women, and other time, being patriotic. In 'No Any Other Flowers...', rejecting the violence her patriotism brims over through a desire to get native lover and native flower.
But, now I
Not other flower
My own flower of Mangalsen
And your love that I am in need of.
Momila's poems include our experiences and choices, and feelings, too. Thus, her poems are not at a distance from all of us. The city is still strange to the thousands of newcomers, and it has not become their own. Thus, the poet meditating in her poems is seeking compensation in this strange city.
So,
Relative you are mine,
Dear one you are mine,
Truth you are mine,
God you are mine,
Dear Poem!
I, to dedicate myself in you,
In your weird land,
Am knocking the door of your heart.
Her poems do not create any geographical boundaries. As a result, she reaches Japan to sympathize Japanese who have lost their relatives in tsunami. The only thing that link all of us is humanity. Her poems are drenched with human values.
Don't cry alone away from me
Crying alone
Slanted drops of tears don't reach me.
The last poem included in this anthology 'Bhimsen Thapa's Suicide Note', written being afflicted with pain of country's suffering, is also a title poem. Simple but composed in her own way with extraordinary imagery style, the poem tries to analyze the reasons behind the suicide of patriots like Bhimsen Thapa, and being hurt with country's catastrophe, poet directs her satire to government's mechanism. The poem indicates present rather than the past.
To end such fearsome curse,
Here Bhimsen Thapas not the statue,
But the corpse they have to become.
In this anthology, Momila's poems being meaningful, innovative and filled with philosophy are simple and lively. The poems contain depth of feeling and meaning as much as the charm. The female consciousness is predominant in the anthology. Her some poems are personal feeling while others are based on reality. However, her poems have become universal and uncomplicated. Somewhere in the poems, readers may encounter with the abstractness. Again, there is a kind of attraction in it, too. To sum up, Bhimsen Thapa's Suicide Note is a literary work should be read by all who have a little interest in poetry, and should keep a copy of it for future reference.
