Smoke, sense and sensibility.
I was visiting the medical school campus at Boston University a few days back. And I noticed 'irony' in its most uncanny form. A bunch of smart, savvy, young minds, mindlessly dispensing snow white fumes from 4-inch sticks, pushing sensibility to oblivion. The stark irony; this picteresque cynicism was outside the Lung Cancer Research Deparment in the med campus. I was at loss of words or reason, when I tried to reason how a bunch of scientists (or so I presume), could devote a whole lifetime to study a rampant addiction and yet cool their heels by being addicted rampantly to the same addiction.In school I learnt 'necessity is the mother of invention". However I am still in the process of genotyping the DNA behind 'Nicotine addiction' to find who its mother is. Smoking is injurious, smoking kills, smoking puts you at a health risk blah blah blah..we have heard it all, we know it all, and yet we still do it all. Why?
How cool is it to puff in a heady cocktail of 4000 chemicals, many of them known carcinogens, sifting the smoke into the deep alveoli of our lungs, reducing them to a chimney to filter tar. Its so obviously wrong, that if it were mathematics, it would be axiomatic to conclude "smoking is wrong" like "multiplying by zero gives you a zero". And that is what you smokers are doing, multiplying your life with a cigarette to get a zero. The sad part being the zero carried over to your near and dear(which I am not sure about) ones.
Many of my very good friends are smokers, and I have passively inhaled half their sorrows, their tensions, their depression. And believe me every whiff is more depressing than the previous one. And when I try to sound my "quit smoking" alarm, I get a indignant "you don't know, you have to do it to know". I am at loss, trying reason why I should do it. I have also heard the oafish "ohh my god its so cool" deep breaths about smoking. But what astonishes me is the transition this stamina stick brings in smokers. One puff brings a certain swagger to a tremble, a whiff of lewd tobacco can concieve a great idea, a four inch stick I can't believe can actually dispense inhibitions into a air of chutzpah. I don't like to pontificate or be a moral witholder, but to me, people who tend to hide behind a smoke screen, trying to blow away their fears with the something as cheap as tobacco need to do some thinking, without the stick, of course.
"I am going to quit tommorow", "this is my last cigarette","I can quit whenever I can", "one cigarette doesn't hurt", "I just smoke one a day"....
DONT LIE TO YOURsELF.
During my good ol' days, I was assigned to a project with one of my friends. Planning an approach, zeroing in on a date to start and deciding when to stop procrastinating brought us three days within the deadline. We both were gladiators of "last ditch effort" fame; working 36 hrs at a stretch with him made me realize what a curse smoking is.
Every step was validated by a cigarette, each milestone was labelled by a cigarette, it became both the motivation and the reward for the effort, the project was shabbily reduced to a smoke fest. At the end of it, I came out huffing, stifled, smoked filled, disgusted and one friend less....
Smokers, its your life, your body, and your right to be masoschistic, but please don't try to justify it because I don't buy what you sell. Smoke when others are not around because we breathe the same air, and we have the same right as you to do to decide not to be smoke. I don't want to be cool, I just want to live. So thanks but no thanks.....
How cool is it to puff in a heady cocktail of 4000 chemicals, many of them known carcinogens, sifting the smoke into the deep alveoli of our lungs, reducing them to a chimney to filter tar. Its so obviously wrong, that if it were mathematics, it would be axiomatic to conclude "smoking is wrong" like "multiplying by zero gives you a zero". And that is what you smokers are doing, multiplying your life with a cigarette to get a zero. The sad part being the zero carried over to your near and dear(which I am not sure about) ones.
Many of my very good friends are smokers, and I have passively inhaled half their sorrows, their tensions, their depression. And believe me every whiff is more depressing than the previous one. And when I try to sound my "quit smoking" alarm, I get a indignant "you don't know, you have to do it to know". I am at loss, trying reason why I should do it. I have also heard the oafish "ohh my god its so cool" deep breaths about smoking. But what astonishes me is the transition this stamina stick brings in smokers. One puff brings a certain swagger to a tremble, a whiff of lewd tobacco can concieve a great idea, a four inch stick I can't believe can actually dispense inhibitions into a air of chutzpah. I don't like to pontificate or be a moral witholder, but to me, people who tend to hide behind a smoke screen, trying to blow away their fears with the something as cheap as tobacco need to do some thinking, without the stick, of course.
"I am going to quit tommorow", "this is my last cigarette","I can quit whenever I can", "one cigarette doesn't hurt", "I just smoke one a day"....
DONT LIE TO YOURsELF.
During my good ol' days, I was assigned to a project with one of my friends. Planning an approach, zeroing in on a date to start and deciding when to stop procrastinating brought us three days within the deadline. We both were gladiators of "last ditch effort" fame; working 36 hrs at a stretch with him made me realize what a curse smoking is.
Every step was validated by a cigarette, each milestone was labelled by a cigarette, it became both the motivation and the reward for the effort, the project was shabbily reduced to a smoke fest. At the end of it, I came out huffing, stifled, smoked filled, disgusted and one friend less....
Smokers, its your life, your body, and your right to be masoschistic, but please don't try to justify it because I don't buy what you sell. Smoke when others are not around because we breathe the same air, and we have the same right as you to do to decide not to be smoke. I don't want to be cool, I just want to live. So thanks but no thanks.....
posted by Badri at 12:49 AM
3 Comments:
U very well know what I am going to say about your writing... but what the hell... lemme repeat... its awesome as usual... great work done..
Smoking is something which has become such a fashion statement these days. People do not realise that its not just them but people around them who also get harmed...
FYI to all smokers... its neither cool & no one needs to know why you smoke.. its just ghastly and of course you should quit!!
badri anna- wow! everytime i read something you write, it makes me see things in a totally different perspective. i especially liked this blog...you know how much i am against smoking. i wish that everyone could understand what they are actually doing to their bodies... reading things like this makes me want to become a doctor even more so that i may make a difference...please keep writing and i will keep reading...
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