Gopi's A Suicide Note: Celebration or Challenge

Mohan Prasad Kharel

Mohan Kharel

I received Gopi Sapkota’s collection of poems, A Suicide Note, in October amidst a busy schedule of school, family, and work.  I had heard about the book before, but now I got something concrete in my hand, a publication from someone who was my M.A. classmate, back in 1995.

I somehow conquered the temptation to read the book right away so that I could focus on my schoolwork. I waited for the semester end, but in the meantime I kept wondering what might have made Gopi write on the topic of suicide.

At the time I received Gopi’s book, I had to bear with some heartbreaking news of suicides committed in Nepal, U.S.A. and Canada. Although suicide is not anything new and writing on this topic has always been there in one form or another, it is not at all a pleasant topic to talk about, and it is often a controversial topic.

In poetry, a poet basically expresses feelings. While Gopi embraces the topic of suicide and seems to give it a hug, I constantly hid the book from my children because I was worried that they might infer something sinister seeing A Suicide Note in their dad’s hand. Or what if they learnt a few lessons from the book and concluded that suicide could be a viable option?

In literature, suicide can be a theme, or a metaphor, but in societies across the globe it is a stigma, a taboo, and an indelible scar often associated with illness. Apart from painful terminal illnesses when it seems logical for people to decide to end their lives, not many people would endorse suicide as an option. If they do, then there must be an existential crisis or a huge amount of injustice. Reading Gopi’s poems in this collection, mostly on the theme of death, left me confused whether his approval for the choice of death as an alternative to life has to do with existential crisis or with social injustice.

Gopi seems to be referring to hundreds of deaths a person dies on a daily basis due to penury in this fiercely competitive and selfish society. It can also be extended to social injustice, oppression, and their repercussions, leading to drugs, depression, hence making suicide the only alternative. However, Gopi seems ambivalent, or maybe too resigned, in terms of indicating the rationale behind the choice of death when he says “Never earned to the level” in one place and “One should die one day/ It’s about time; it’s about luck/You never know how long you live.” How can one not blame the society or system that keeps people so vulnerable? How much your service to the society is proportionally reciprocated?

It is always easy to preach and so immensely difficult to practice. Yes, the monstrous system that keeps us powerless is so strong, so invisible, and so shrewd that many of us would rather go into a bar or feel depressed or criticize the politicians, or quietly leave the world, as not much is available to hold onto. Interestingly, the world that has ever been blind and deaf to you until you live seems to notice you once you leave the stage. And it is this phenomenon of our time, or of all times, that seems to inspire Gopi to write these poems, in which each endeavor of a common person looks hopelessly dwarfish and insufficient to counter the systemic forces.

What baffles me though is the tone of widespread resignation in some of his poems that relate to the theme of death. Could it be a strategy to challenge the establishment by celebrating suicide so much so that one day people will be convinced that it is the best option and line-up for the journey to the other world leaving behind a few capitalists wondering what went wrong?