Much Ado About Smoking

Jaisa ki baba Shakespeare ne kaha tha… to smoke or not to smoke is the question. So much energy and paper is wasted every year to discourage people from smoking that it has become a major cause of global warming. So whenever I light up the cancer-stick(as the purists tend to call it) I think why do people smoke? Or rather as the post is mine, why do I smoke? Well, to be honest, I don’t know. I can give loads of excuses but the truth is that I don’t know.

I started smoking when I was in DPS, in 11th class. It was not peer pressure that initiated me. I experimented with it just because I wanted to do it. Well, it was one of the best feelings I had in my life, better than when I smoked weed or pot.

And before I knew what was going on I was addicted to it. I loved the feeling of being with my tanhai and sutta. When I went to college, I had many frnds becuz I smoked. They went on to become my best frnds for life. Till date we share a chai sutta whenever we meet.

My lovestory with my wife started bucuz she wanted me to quit. She felt that I had all the qualities of a gentleman except that I smoke and not chew ;).

So much has been the influence of a sutta in my life that I can’t imagine my life without it. Its not that I have not tried quitting. It has the distinction of being my sole new year resolution three years in running. Somehow or the other I end up taking a drag and then whoosh, its gone. The hazy blue cloud was too good to resist, for me.

I pondered upon the situation and came up with a few plausible reasons to help my cause of smoking :-

- You make frnds very fast when you smoke. I have met some of the best people of my life in the smoking zones. There is a great comaraderie between people who smoke, they form a sort of brotherhood or may be sisterhood (I have some gal frnds who smoke), hated and despised by everyone, they have a strong bond amongst them.

- Its easily available and at a very reasonable price. The merchandising and visiblity of the product is too good. You can be at the farthest corner of the earth (even where there is no Maruti Service Station or Reliance network) you will find a small shack which sells cigarettes.

- It is a good morning walk. I wake up early in the morning and go to the nearby paanwalla for a fag. I have kept the habit for last 9 years and I am fit as a fiddle.

- After supper I walk back to the panwalla and thus follow the old saying that “After meals rest for a while, after supper walk a mile”.

- Girls hate me when they come to know that I smoke. This decreases the insecurity level of my wife and thus prolongs my happy marriage.

- Its good to invest in the country’s economy. ITC Limited is one of India’s foremost private sector companies with a market capitalisation of more than US $ 15 billion and a turnover of US $ 4.75 billion. Do I need to tell that I smoke only Indian cigarettes?

I can rattle out a hundred such benefits of smoking but what the hell… I would rather go out and smoke a cigarette than preach its values to some infidels.

P.S. - This post is not a glorification of smoking but a personal reminder to me as to why I smoke and as they say Keep Walking….