'Banned' Wagon

The country-wide smoking ban is nearly a month old. But no uprisings yet. Not even a candle-light protest vigil. Rights continue to get trampled in this world. Smokers are humans too. Humans with a different perspective: we will all die one day. Yes, you too, you non-smoking, non-guzzling, non-non-organic-food-hogging, non-lethargic fitness freak. We smokers just deal with it better.

Still, every time we feel the urge, we need to make our way down office buildings, adorned with paan stains in every corner, to the sun-soaked, rain-drenched roadside. That's what a smoke means these days: braving the weather, the stares of regressive men, and the traffic.

Even the Friday night tipple has to go without its accompanying smoke rings. How can a sane person drink without taking a drag from time to time? How can the interesting argument on the future of Indian cricket without the Big Three be carried on without cigarettes? What kind of one-dimensional character devised this form of cruelty? What's next? A ban on liquor? A clamp on adda? A prohibitionary order on a party?

For many of us, cigarettes are a friend. Yes, the friend demands its pound of flesh, but do you really think friendships are without give-and-take? A cigarette comforts us in grief, supports us in times of trouble, joins us in happier moments, relieves us when we are tense and anxious. It helps us overcome that awkward pause on conversation, strike up a conversation with that good-looking stranger...

Smoking helps us feel at one with the world. For however long we are in it.