Rabin Thapaliya is a Nepali Canadian poet who writes in Nepali. Since immigrating to Canada in 2014, he has remained active in literary organizations and reading groups in the Toronto and Scarborough, Ontario, regions. His writing moves across poetry, essays, songs, and ghazals, and his literary work is shaped by migration, spiritual inquiry, social satire, memory, and the everyday emotional worlds of Nepali life in Canada and beyond. Alongside his own writing, he has contributed to the building of literary spaces for Nepali readers and writers in the diaspora.

Thapaliya was born in 1981 in Sarsyoonkharka, now known as Temal, in Kavrepalanchok district in central Nepal. His parents were farmers who had no formal education, though they were literate. He was the youngest child in the family and spent much of his childhood with his grandmother because his school was closer to her home. While studying at Jana Chetana Secondary School, he began writing poems and stories as part of extracurricular activities. At the age of eleven, while still in middle school, he published his first poem, “Kisaan” (“Farmer”), in Koseli, the literary supplement of the national daily Kantipur.

After completing grade ten, he moved to Kathmandu for further study. He joined Pashupati Campus for intermediate-level education, where he won prizes in essay competitions. One of the early essays he wrote for these competitions focused on the contributions of the Nepali political leader and fiction writer B. P. Koirala. These awards and the encouragement that came with them strengthened his commitment to essay writing, and he went on to publish a series of essays.

He began undergraduate study in English and economics at Ratna Rajya Campus, Tribhuvan University, in Kathmandu. He later pursued legal studies and received an LLB degree from Nepal Law Campus. Literature remained his central intellectual and creative interest, and he went on to complete an MA in English at the Central Department of English, Tribhuvan University. This academic formation became closely tied to his creative writing. After immigrating to Canada, he shifted his professional direction and studied computer and network engineering, though he remained dedicated to reading, writing, and building literary community.

Thapaliya’s movement from village to city, together with his study of literature, led him to regard literature as central to the search for meaning in life. He immersed himself in the works of Laxmi Prasad Devkota, who remained one of his major inspirations. Parijat was another formative influence. The life and work of poet, critic, and scholar Abhi Subedi also encouraged him, especially during his student years, to continue writing poetry and essays. From English literature, P. B. Shelley’s rebellious spirit and T. S. Eliot’s modernist poetry left a lasting impression on him. He also read Buddhi Sagar and Paulo Coelho with particular interest. These influences shaped a literary outlook in which reflection, questioning, lyricism, and social awareness remain closely connected.

He studied MA in English and taught literature at Pashupati Campus, Tribhuvan University. He started writing ghazals and songs. The ghazal, a lyric form of rhyming couplets that entered Nepali through Arabic, Persian, and Urdu literary traditions, had seen renewed interest in recent decades, and Thapaliya participated in the ghazal writing movement. At the campus he was teaching, he worked closely with Ghanendra Ojha and Devi Nepali, both teachers and ghazal writers. Together, they encouraged students and other literary participants to write, recite, and discuss ghazals across different forums.

Spiritual inquiry also became an important dimension of his writing. His literary work often turns toward the relation between the self and the larger world and reflects the influence of interactions with gurus and mentors, as well as repeated visits to sacred sites in the Kathmandu Valley, especially Pashupatinath and the Aryaghat area. These experiences deepened his interest in self-discovery, self-awareness, and the ethical and existential dimensions of life. In this sense, spirituality in his work does not remain separate from social experience; it enters his writing as a mode of reflection on being, loss, relation, and inward search.

After coming to Toronto, Thapaliya became involved with Nepali Sahitya Samaj Canada (Nepali Literary Society Canada), where he contributed to the organization of literary events and book launches. In 2019, he initiated a Nepali book club that created a regular space for discussion of Nepali and English literature, religion, and contemporary social and political issues. Through these activities, he has helped sustain a literary culture among Nepali-speaking readers in Canada and encouraged other diasporic writers to articulate their experiences in written form. His literary and organizational work together show a continuing commitment to reading, discussion, and community formation.

In 2015, he published his first poetry collection in Nepali, Sapanako Manchhe (The Man of Dream), brought out by Charumati Publishers. The volume contains forty-four poems written between 2013 and 2015. The collection explores life in diaspora, self-awareness, social and political satire, and reflections on motherhood. The title poem offers a meditation on the dreams attached to immigration and on the ironies that emerge once one actually becomes an immigrant. “Paradeshi Dashain” evokes nostalgia for Nepali festivals, while poems such as “Panchasheel” satirize social evils and political violence in Nepal at the turn of the century. Taken together, the poems move between intimate feeling and public critique.

Taranath Sharma, in his commentary on the collection, praises Thapaliya’s use of sarcasm and irony. He notes the poet’s ability to trace the dreams of a young person seeking a better life abroad while also confronting cultural displacement and social hardship. Sharma also remarks on the poet’s use of simple but effective vocabulary and on his ability to discover striking similes. What emerges from this reading is a collection in which irony and sarcasm serve not only as literary techniques but also as means of social commentary. The poems ask readers to confront the contradictions and disappointments that accompany aspiration, migration, and the search for cultural belonging. Ramprasad Pant, another commentator, praises Thapaliya’s ability to capture Nepali culture, language, and social values. He observes that the poems speak for the nation and the soil, evoke patriotism, and create a bridge between writers in Nepal and those living abroad. He also points to the philosophical dimension of the poems, arguing that they move beyond surface meaning toward broader reflection on life.

His more recent literary work, consisting mainly of poems and essays, has appeared in print and online venues such as Setopati, Nepal Touch, E-Nepalese, and SahityaPost. These later writings continue his concern with identity, relationships, social tensions, and existential reflection while also extending his range into newer terrains. “Natiko Katha” (“Grandson’s Story”), for example, imagines the future consequences of environmental degradation. In “Gudiyasanga Kura Garne Chhimeki” (“A Neighbour Who Talks to a Doll”),  he explores the fragility of human connection and the ways individuals cope with loneliness in large Western cities. He also returns to figures who shaped his literary imagination, paying tribute to Laxmi Prasad Devkota in “Mahakavi ra Mrityushaiyyako Manavata” (“The Great Poet and Humanism on the Deathbed”) and to Abhi Subedi in “Sete Budho”   (“A Grey-Haired Old Man”). Across these later writings, he revisits the figures of mother and father, the experience of loss and death during the pandemic, the condition of the immigrant, and the failures and discrepancies of social and political life. The movement from Sapanako Manchhe to these later works shows continuity in his concerns while also revealing a widening engagement with urban isolation, memory, tribute, and late-modern uncertainty.

Rabin Thapaliya’s contribution lies in the way he connects poetry, essay writing, spiritual reflection, and literary organization within Nepali Canadian cultural life. His work keeps Nepali language central while engaging migration, estrangement, social criticism, family memory, and the ethical demands of living across worlds. In Canada, he has helped create and sustain discussion spaces for Nepali readers and writers, and his writing has given literary form to the emotional and intellectual textures of diasporic life. He occupies an important place in Nepali literary activity in Canada because his work joins creative writing with community formation and because it carries forward Nepali literary expression in dialogue with migration, introspection, and contemporary social experience.

References

Pant, Ramprasad. “Jeevandarshanle Bhariyeka Jivanta Kavita.” Sapanako Manchhe, by Rabin Thapaliya, Charumati Publishers, 2015.

Sharma, Taranath. “Vyangyako Utkrishtha Udaharan: Sapanako Manchhe.” Sapanako Manchhe by Rabin Thapaliya, Charumati Publishers, 2015.

Thapaliya, Rabin. “Akash Shoonya Chaina.” Setopati.

Thapaliya, Rabin. “Anubhav: Kalakar ra Bideshyatra.” SahityaPost, December 3, 2023,  https://sahityapost.com/top-news/129339/.

Thapaliya, Rabin. “Dharti Mata.” Setopati.

Thapaliya, Rabin. “Dikka Hiun.” Setopati.

Thapaliya, Rabin. “Kathai! Mali Gai.” Setopati.

Thapaliya, Rabin. “Mahakavi ra Mrityushaiyyako Manavata.” Setopati.

Thapaliya, Rabin. “Mero Balyakaaldekhiko Sathi.” Setopati.

Thapaliya, Rabin. “Pheriyeko Kathmandu.” SahityaPost, April 17, 2022,  https://sahityapost.com/gair-aakhyan/gair-aakhyan-sasmara/70157/.

Thapaliya, Rabin. Sapanako Manchhe. Charumati Publishers, 2015.

Thapaliya, Rabin. “Yaspala Pani Auna Sakina Aama.” Setopati.