Settling Thoughts about Suicide

Krishna Sharma

Writer Krishna Sharma

The Front Cover of Gopi’s “A Suicide Note” is really gloomy. It gives total justice to the title of his anthology of poems, his first in English. But for readers, it does not. It scared me as hell when I received his book in the priority mail some two months ago. Leafless trees that stood against the cold wind of an autumn evening with heavy skies above them would not please one’s eyes as they would try to make their minds up to turn on the pages.

The book lay on the table with the cover page buried under other books for as long as a month until Gopi called me in Viber from London one late Saturday morning. I knew he wanted to know if I had finished reading his poems by not asking about it at all. And I had felt guilty that I had not read them although I had gotten that scary looking tiny little book some good weeks back. After a brief chat I hung up the phone, stretched my legs on the table and took the book to my hands and started turning the pages, one after another.

It took a little more than an hour to finish 30 poems that I thought would resemble the garland of human head-skeletons. I was wrong. I was goddamn wrong. My perception of the front cover was completely otherwise. I was absolutely stupid not to anticipate the clean bright sunny day after the storm would pass. I was ashamed enough for not recalling PB Shelley’s celebrated last line of the poem -- To the West Wind --  “ … If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Gopi makes fun of the act of suicide so much in his “Suicide Note” that readers are not as confused as Albert Camus once was (Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?: The Paradox of Choice), and choose to have a cup of coffee before thinking about doing anything. I had a nice cup of coffee myself after I had Gopi’s poems read.

Gopi’s poems talk to you as if they are the characters of a play addressing to you from the stage. They talk to you about things you always feel uncomfortable and ashamed of taking about. You always wish someone to open the topic for discussion and then you join. This is exactly what happens when yu read Gopi’s poems. They talk about forbidden thoughts which you want to discuss about. With his poems you feel yourself at home and finish the entire thirty some poems in a single sitting and stand up laughing, laughing to yourself and many others who feared to celebrate death and thus always lived poor.

Gopi’s first effort in publishing in English is not faultless, however. Known to Nepali literary world as an emerging dramatist, Gopi in his poems wanders around topics like he wanders in real life – from Nepal to Europe and from Europe to Nepal. His favorite topics are what you and I like to talk about: life, dreams about life, struggle, failure and of course, the thoughts of suicide.

While leafing through the pages of the book, readers would definitely want to advise Gopi to streamline the thoughts by streaming the poems of similar topics together and make it seamless. Gopi talks a lot about dream in many poems. His poems on dream are scattered here and there.  However, Gopi would listen but not heed much to such thoughtful advises while finalizing his upcoming drama as he strongly believes Sartre’s philosophy and calls life as the product of random acts.

Give Gopi’s thoughts a try and settle your thoughts about suicide. Former secretary of the Society of Nepali Writers in English while in Kathmandu, Gopi’s this anthology can be ordered online via amazon.com, which will ship your order home in less than a week.