A Moment in an Eternity; A Collection of Gems by Tulsi Thapa

“A Moment in an Eternity” is a brief collection of poems written in the Japanese Hyaku style. This book is the soul and mind of the poet. Mr Tulsi Thapa, being a true genius and a veteran of the modern thought, he hardly appears in the media. Life is a mystery and we keep on unfolding the mysteries of it. Some people are artistic to document it in different forms of art and some of them remain isolated like Robinson Cruso’s Island. Tulsi Thapa is mixture of both. Despite the fact that his island is little bit visible, it is too much engaging.

“The Beginning” is the first step of his powerful images surging in the mind of the readers. I like to use the word ‘Good Beginning’ having reins and showing the direction of the self not the horse. When we are able to show the right direction to ourselves, our journey can be a wonderful experience.

Tulsi Thapa’s poems do not follow the rigid chronology of orderly writing like Dr. Samuel Johnson’s decorum. His writing can better represent the picture of an orchestra where everything falls from different direction, yet in a complete order. In his another poem, Thapa has given a blurred vision of the historical tower Dharahara:

Oh tower! Your height

Has now no history

You make us so dizzy.

History can be rewritten and changed by those who have power. The original height of the tower has become a mystery which may create dizziness in all the viewers. Furthermore, there are many other historical monuments in the country which have been disfigured and blurred in the pages of history. There is no final history as Foucault says.

Similarly, “Excavation”, “Rani Pokhari”, “Kathmandu”, “Pokhara “are other poems where the poet ignites the light of the history in relation to the present.  Kathmandu is personified, “who has a soul, warm and bold.” Rani Pokhari is raising a question to the people:

Why is this bar to my fate

When I am imprisoned

 In my own depth?

The word imprisoned may denote the history of Rani Pokhari which has been imprisoned in the musty books as she is encircled by the iron bar. ‘pokhara is the icon of Machhapuchhre who is standing like wounded soldier with  full of scars on its body and its blood  flooded in the Fewa Lake. This poem is also environment friendly. These days, the Machhapuchhre is becoming a huge skeleton and its crooked bones are visible. The white blood of it could be seen on the lake.

The poet asks the question of identity several times in the poems. In “Identification” he writes:

Born, it was me

Now he who is living

It’s not me, and not me.

When we grow old we lose our true self. We become artificial like plastic dolls in the showcase. We live the life of intense hypocrite. Our identity gets smeared and bleared. We hand on different batches of identity like a member of a political party, a manager of the bank, a husband of x, a teacher, a student etc. This identity keeps on changing. We can’t live our true self. So the poet says, “Now who is living, it’s not me and not me.” Great philosopher Heidegger’s idea of ‘nothingness’ can be seen in his poem entitled “The Mind”:

Take out everything from here

 When there is nothing

You really are there.

The poet is talking about the existence of a being out of nothing. Heidegger says, “What is the nothing? Our very first approach to this question has something unusual about it. In our asking we posit the nothing in advance as something that “is” such and such; we posit it as a being” (What is Metaphysics?,  3). Here, we only can realize our existence in the complete negation of conscious being. Similarly, his other poems ‘loneliness’, ‘Non- Existent’, ‘Man’ explore the meaning of human existence in a real sense. “Man” is the reflection of the true confused man of today like the confused army in the battlefield.

For non-living things

Its living being

Among themselves always confusing.

In this poem, he doesn’t see much difference between living and non-living thing except the latter is only the ‘difference marker’ to the first. J. Krishnamurti says, “We are aware that there is the conscious and unconscious mind, but most of us function only on the conscious level and our whole life is practically limited to that. We never pay attention to the deeper level of unconscious mind which creates confusion on the self”.  (The First and Last freedom, 202-206)

 As Krishnamurti says that we are only living with our conscious self, Thapa states “only the living being” differs from the non-living. However, we always are confusing in our true self, identity and on the issues of complete freedom.

Thapa’s poetry has no boundaries. There is not a single subject that he left untouched. In a small booklet, he has preserved the cosmos of mesmerizing ideas. He has raised the issues of humanism, democracy, environment, science and tradition. With the use of vivid imagery and economic use of the words, Thapa stands as a mountain; though mute for the commoners, an orator for the people like Devkota.

References:

Krishnamurti, J. The First and Last freedom. Chennai; Krishnamurti Foundation India, 2001.

Adams, Hazard , Leroy Searle. Ed. Critical Theory since 1965. London; Oxford University press, 1985.