The country was in a period of peace. The announcement of the referendum had brought Nepali politics to a turning point. All genres of creation and presentation were struggling to make a living in harmony with this change. When he got to know the capital, a flood of drama had already begun to flow here.

Kathmandu's National Auditorium, Pragya Pratishthan, National Theatre and Mahendra Police Club - the sound of drama and stage performances was everywhere. The whole of Nepal was on the verge of a change. The story was in Falgun, 2036 BS. A young man named Sunil Pokharel, slipping into the chaos of that time, followed his senior theatre artist Badri Adhikari and took a leap from Biratnagar to this magnificent metropolis. 

In the same year, he trained to pass the trainee theatre artist exam with the help of Harihar Sharma, the theatre director of Pragya Pratishthan. After that, he worked as a daily wage artist in the theatre department there for three years and became a regular on the stage. 

'This is a man born for drama.' Poet-painter Jeevan Acharya used to say about Sunil until later. The story was not untrue. After gaining theoretical and practical knowledge and experiences of theater from Pragya Pratishthan, he wanted to fly like a free bird. He was also in search of freedom on the stage and wanted to fly in the open sky beyond the caged stage of Pragya.

He got the sky of Ashesh Malla for that flight. At that time, Shailesh Acharya had come to Kathmandu from Biratnagar with the play ‘Shishirka Patajhar’ to participate in Pragya’s drama festival. After the festival was over, Shailesh got Sunil into Ashesh Malla’s ‘Sarvnaam’ drama group. After that, the first play he played was ‘Ityadi Prashanaharu’. Through that play, he got associated with Ashesh Malla’s group. 

Ashesh was at the peak of theater activities at that time. Ashesh was being praised everywhere for his innovative and contemporary, thoughtful experimental drama performances. 

Sunil was able to use every experience, knowledge and skill of theatre he learned there in Pronaam. He acted in ambitious plays like ‘Etyadi-Prashnharu’, ‘Hami Basant Khojredhchu’ (Sadknaat), ‘Sadk Deh Sadak Samm’, ‘Natakhoro Natak’ and many others. 

Sunil always wanted to fly, not be blown away. He had entered Pronaam with this aspiration, but gradually it also started to feel narrow to him. Perhaps he did not see a wide space to spread out there! Badri Adhikari and he, who had joined the theatre journey since Biratnagar, were both in Pronaam and both were extremely talented. They were young, they had passion, ambition and dreams. Therefore, to find their unfulfilled dreams in the free sky, they left the nest of Pronaam and came to build their own nest in the theatre tree of ‘Arohan’. 

But this journey was not as easy as they thought. They found themselves in a quagmire of misfortune just a few years after opening Arohan, using theater as a medium to earn a living. It was in 2040. Arohan decided to do a horror (Harhar) style play. That play was – ‘A War with Darkness’. A two-story setting was set up at the same cost as a film. How much did the other expenses cost? It turned out to be beyond imagination.

That play was staged at the National Assembly for eleven days, but it did not earn a single penny. Instead, it was paid fifty thousand rupees at that time. From the day after the play ended, people started coming to demand payment for the setting, microphone, lighting, and banner. Sunil had told this writer about that play – ‘At that time, we were in trouble. Unable to pay the money, we were forced to move around and live underground.’

That was actually the most unfavorable time in Sunil’s life. Falling, getting up, walking - falling again, getting up, walking. His stage structure at that time was being built like this. There was no soil to support his existence under his ground and no sky to spread his dreams. At that time, he was crawling in a very difficult routine. The days were like mountains. It felt like failures were standing in a row. 

But no matter how difficult the situation was, time does not last long. Sunil, playing with this difficult time, one day got the opportunity to study theater at India's famous 'National School of Drama' (NSD) in Delhi between 1984-1987. After completing his education, he returned to Nepal, but there was not much change in the theater here. But Sunil had completely changed. Now he was not the Sunil of 'And That's Why Kumar Gets Angry'. He was the first Nepali theater artist to win a 'Gold Medal' from a prestigious theater school. Sitting with his hands tied, everyone was likely to point fingers at him, and returning to the stage in a normal manner was a matter of losing respect. That's why he was struggling. 

Fortunately, at this time, he had the happy coincidence of directing Shakespeare's famous play 'Hamlet' from the Cultural Institute. One afternoon, while the play was being 'rehearsed' at the dance hall, a foreign man and a Nepali woman entered the hall. After watching the rehearsal for a long time, the woman, perhaps impressed, asked Sunil - 'Are you the director of this?' He said yes, but she asked the same question three times without believing it.

Sunil had said - 'I was very young at that time. He asked the same question three times, not believing what this young man would do with 'Hamlet'.' The woman was Kalpana Ghimire, the then co-director of the French Cultural Center, Bagbazar, and the foreigner was its director, Jean Romanisiano. And after seeing Sunil's work, the center entrusted him with the responsibility of directing the Nepali adaptation of the famous French playwright Moliere's 'Skampa's Dauphech'. This play was performed at the theater for months and established a history of professionalism with record numbers.

'Skampa's Dauphech' had added new energy to him and gave him the courage to get up and run again to do theater. Then, he drew the outline of 'Arohan Satyagraha' in collaboration with the French Cultural Center. Its main visionary was - artist, poet, journalist Jeevan Acharya. Arohan Satyagraha greatly elevated the theater and also made it popular in a year. It made the intellectual community of the capital experience the Nepali theater style. Arohan ran this journey at a speed of one hundred kilometers per hour.

During this time, he directed Albert Camus's 'Unrelated', Alexander Vampilov's 'Eldest Son', Mohan Rakesh's 'Ashadhko Ek Din' and Vijay Tendulkar's 'Giddha'. But despite the praise he received from 'Aarohan Satyagraha', it did not provide him with a livelihood. And, this journey also reached a turning point and became like the fate of a bus that crashed due to a punctured tire. Again, the dream was shattered. It was natural that after that, most of the fellow passengers scattered in search of traditional livelihood. The Aarohan-like bus and its driver Sunil and co-driver Nisha Sharma Pokharel were left standing at a destinationless crossroads again. 

After this, he also did plays with the deaf. He also did plays to provide shelter to street children. He performed street plays more than seven hundred times in 45 districts of the country. But the closer he tried to get to the stage, the more achievements ran away from him. 

No matter how hard he tried, the theater did not make him happy. On the contrary, it only added to his boredom and discontent. And he made plans to flee to America like some of his younger generation. He had almost become a gangster in his preparations to leave, but the theater waved the green flag before him again. And circumstances and coincidence made him the hero of the Dand Gurukul of Baneshwor. Keshav Sthapit, the then mayor of Kathmandu Metropolitan City, financially ruined his 'Gurukuliya' concept. Thus, in BS 2060, Sunil Pokharel, along with Nisha Sharma Pokharel and his nine trainees, once again entered the arena of the theater. 

During this period, Gurukul staged dozens of plays under Sunil's direction, including Abhi Subedi's 'Dreams of the Pink Flower', 'The Story of Fire', 'Dreams of Mayadevi', Henrik Ibsen's 'Putali's House' and Oedipus', CK Lal's 'Sapnako Saviti', 'Dr. Kanak', etc. Along with directing, he also gave lively acting in plays like 'Putali's House', 'Oedipus' etc. During this time, he introduced his talent by directing strongly in plays like 'Karnani Dakhkhin Bagdo Cha', 'Suina Karnalika', 'Kamalari', 'Bukhyancha' etc. prepared by the Gurukul's Rangtoli.

He also introduced Dr. Sanjeev Upreti and journalist Dilbhushan Pathak to the Gurukul's theatre with lively acting. This play was a theatrical adaptation of Dr. Upreti's novel 'Ghanchakkar'. Sunil is a talent who has the ability to transform a difficult work into a play. Ekta used to say that even if Narayan Gopal sings a newspaper editorial, it becomes a popular song, and Sunil Pokharel can turn such newspaper columns into a successful play. Narayan Gopal could not prove this, but Sunil proved it by staging a play on Sharachandra Vasti's weekly column 'Arko Artha Lagema' in Kantipur at Mandala Theater.

 But unfortunately, his dream was shattered again. The dream with which he had set foot on the hills of Baneshwor was also crushed in 2067. Even after that, he staged Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Nights - Sapana'. He ran the 'Gya' school that creates dramatists. He acted in Vijay Malla's play 'Kohi Kin Raabda Hos' under the direction of his own disciple Shankar Rijal. Now, he says that he is on a break. ‘I teach my students at Shankhamul, that’s all’, he said, ‘I am currently on a break from theatre activities.’