Soulless Phantoms , livre ebook

Anam Shahab

SOULLESS PHANTOMS
Photographs by Saharish Siddiqui
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Author s Note
Part 1: Existentialist
Soulless Phantoms
Grey Minds and Dark Times
The Clash of the Titans
Grappling with Existence
Mockery
Who Are You?
When Words Take Over
The Mind of the Mob
Cabinized
Part 2: Motivational
The Artist Within You
Step between Ridiculous and Sublime
Of the Eloquence of a Drop of Sweat
Keynes and I
Desires
The Goal
Part 3: Of Life, Places and People
A Toast to Emotions
An Ode to Cambridge
Of the Day I Broke Out of the Ivory Towers
Scented Memories
The Young Escapists
The Routine Drama of Love and Lust
Of Ageless Venice
Eulogy for Nani
To a Lover
Of Working Men and Women
Follow Penguin
Copyright Page
PENGUIN ENTERPRISE
SOULLESS PHANTOMS
Anam Shahab is an economist for a public policy consulting firm and has been writing poetry since the age of ten. A Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Cambridge, Anam completed her MPhil and postgraduate diploma in Economics, and then spent a year conducting research and teaching undergraduates. She also holds a first-class degree in economics from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi.
Her poem, Grey Minds and Dark Times , written after the Mumbai terrorist attacks, has previously appeared in the Times of India . She was the founder-editor of the Cambridge Economist , a student magazine in its fourth year now and running successfully. She lives in London.
This is for Dad, who always treated me like a grown-up, even when I was a ten-year-old, and taught me to do things not to please the world but to accomplish my own desire for creativity and intellectual curiosity.
Thanks to Mom, Sarro and Oli for the immense love that warms my heart every day.
Author s Note
It is beautiful to be alive; at times it is painful too, but I d rather be here now than anywhere else. I think this appropriately sums up the theme of my poems.
The majority of my poems reflect the existentialist dilemmas which we have been facing for centuries-questions that come to the mind during the mundane routine passages of life and haunt us forever. These poems are an attempt to resolve the dilemmas to an extent, by questioning their very existence, by mocking the very fact that we care too much about how we came to be, rather than what we are going to do about it. They are also an attempt to resolve my soulless phantoms which flit around like little fruit flies-so tiny and harmless, and yet so visible.
Within this world of existentialist dilemmas some of the poems talk about the various questions that one faces today-where did terrorism come from? What is love? What is alcohol addiction?-while the other poems celebrate feelings and places and people.
The majority of my poems were written during my teenage years and early twenties, when ideologies meant the world, and time seemed to be dancing at my fingertips, stretching out forever in various shades of bright and dark days. I wrote them after random periods of self-motivational musing, laying down the rules of the world in ink (or rather what I understood to be the rules of the world). Expressing my thoughts in rhyme and rhythm has been a cathartic experience and a joy beyond words.
London 2013
Part 1

EXISTENTIALIST
Soulless Phantoms
Dead without any sense of reality,
A struggle brewing in my inner depths,
Lachrymal glands working with strange ferocity,
Words of wisdom seem so inept.
Aimless emotions trapped in an enigmatic prism,
Wild laws of reflection and refraction I understand not.
Dialectics in the mind only widen the schism,
Neurons so numb and nerves so wrought.
At such times I look up at the sky,
In the hope that God will answer my prayers,
But he too seems helpless, unable to descry
A machine of his making with faulty gears!
These are times when all rationality fails,
Thoughts like ghosts take a nebulous form.
I seek help from others, but to no avail.
Surrounded by millions and yet so forlorn
The crowd beckons with a look of glee,
Shouting about religion, morals and bibles galore.
Each one trying to proselytize me,
Fighting among themselves like knights of yore.
Which knight should I follow?
Which path shall I take?
Whose philosophy should I borrow?
Which truths should I fake?
Helpless in this gigantic mass of contradictions,
Trying to latch on to reality,
I find myself battling my soulless phantoms,
Refusing to give in to life s banality.
Till a voice suddenly speaks out of the shadow:
Would you rather be denied existence?
To my soulless phantoms it deals a hard blow,
Ringing in my ears the sound of the sentence:
If there is no meaning then why not create your own?
Maybe the creator himself has made you the creator
Me, the creator! I shriek, turning very pale,
Till it sinks in; resounds my own sound of laughter.
Grey Minds and Dark Times
I see it all around and wonder where it came from;
Darkness enveloping all of humanity, wonder when it was born?
What acts of absolute depravity, what sins did we commit?
That everywhere I look I see evil minds and acts so illicit.
Satan in hell must be dancing to see these heinous crimes;
Oh, where is God, where is he, my heart pines.
Why did he create men who feed on terror?
Did he create them on purpose or was it some kind of a colossal error!
Men who are living zombies with no thoughts and no heart;
If the world is a stage then what is their part?
Their souls are so infested with hatred that they become blind,
And in gory nightmares of their dirty deeds, peace they find!
Bereft of all values, they lurk in dark aisles;
Their morals are convoluted and thoughts full of guile;
Their brain is numb; their hands wield the gun;
They step out in the open to shoot for fun!
What irrational force consumes the mind of such a man?
How can he murder an innocent being, accomplish such a plan?
What pleasure does he derive from tearing up souls?
What motive does he serve, what can be his goals?
Is he an answer to the vices that men have been engaging in for so long?
Is he merely a reflection of the kind of society to which we belong?
Have we created this Frankenstein by our unknown acts of cruelty?
Is he an act of reprisal by nature, some kind of a penalty?
What past deeds of ours have led to such an ugly outgrowth?