10 Smokey Thoughts

1. When you give a Rs-500 note to the shopkeeper to buy a packet of cigarette worth Rs 94 and when he returns the change to you, which includes four Rs-100 notes, you somehow feel he is giving away some of his own money to you. Just like you feel richer when see you find four Rs-100 notes in your wallet instead of just one Rs-500 note.

2. It is more pleasurable to smoke a cigarette when you walk up to the shop to buy a packet, compared to lighting one that is already in your pocket.

3. I dislike sharing my cigarette, and hate it when someone extends two parted fingers seeking a drag. Though I don't tell him or her that I dislike it, because the person is usually a friend.

4. I absolutely dislike it when men leave their saliva behind after taking a drag from your cigarette. As for women: be my guest.

4. I don't like people bumming cigarettes, though I myself bum one occasionally, very occasionally. But bumming a cigarette as well as borrowing your lighter -- unpardonable. Bumming a cigarette, borrowing your lighter and not returning the lighter -- death penalty!

5. One should let smokers be, as long as they are not blowing the smoke on your face. Or as long as they don't smoke in the same room. But don't make them look, or feel, like criminals.

6. The lungs of a man running a shop at Nandanam signal or at the Pondy Bazaar-Mount Road junction would be no better or worse than a regular smoker. He smokes non-stop even without lighting a cigarette.

7. As an adolescent, I hero-worshipped models of cigarette ads, Jackie Shroff included. Secretly fantasised about being one someday (perhaps the unrealised dream manifested itself in the profile picture of mine on this blog, self-taken about four years ago).

8. I smoked my very first cigarette at the age of 19 when my parents had gone to Delhi to collect a prize of my behalf for the cartoon I had submitted for a nationwide anti-smoking cartoon contest. I could not go to Delhi because I had exams.

9. It feels so good to light up a cigarette while having a drink. It feels even better to light up after good sex. Heaven is when two red lights glow in a dark room smelling of sweat.

10. The real test of determination is not about giving up smoking. The real test, if you are a habitual smoker, is to limit your consumption to four or five cigarettes a day. I so envy people who smoke just two cigarettes a day or just one in two days. I don't want to be a non-smoker, I want to be them.