Thank you for not smoking

Just like we thanked Abba for the music, I think it is also our duty to thank the cigarette companies for the smokers we have around us. They in turn give rise to the ones about to quit or lets call them the almost quitters.It was them who inspired me to write this post. When a number of my friends and co-workers decided to kick the butt it's a great thing for a person like me who, over the years, is forced to become a chain passive smoker.

Now there is a hundred-last-cigarettes difference between the ones ‘about to’ and the ones ‘who have’ quit. The ones about to quit make straight-faced profound statements like, “Oh this is my last. My very last.” They usually say this with the same weight as the last words of a dying man. How much ever somber, this statement is greeted by cheers of support from involuntary passive smokers like me and plain laughter from the smokers standing around. I don’t blame them, the smokers I mean. They have seen so many of their kind who have tried and failed that they can’t help but be cynical. (Did you know cynicism also happens to be a big side effect of nicotine?) Unfortunately, with regard to that ominous statement their mockery is bang on. The next day our almost quitter sheepishly lights up and produces a lame excuse on why “just this one cigarette will help him quit”. This is the first of those hundred cigarettes that I mentioned earlier. Yes,  his statement is twisted  but haven’t you heard many of them already?

Presenting shit smokers and almost quitters say:

Oh I hardly smoke now. I just need one in the morning for timely bowel movements, one during lunch, one in the evening with my chai, one after dinner and one to get some good night sleep. Plus a bonus cigarette for smoking such few a day.

Come on. It’s been so long since I quit. One drag is allowed. (Smoker has quit 5 minutes ago.)

Oh my god the pollution in this city! (Smoker is smoking and increasing levels of air pollution in the city and my lungs. Smoker then throws the cigarette and stubs it to litter the place. Also smoker just happened to increase noise levels by making the hypocritical statement about the pollution in the city.)

I am dying to smoke. (The most ironical statement I have ever heard.)

I promise I’ll try to quit. I’m promising to try. I didn’t say I’m going to quit. (The thought itself has caused smoker to light up right there.)

I can quit anytime. You know 35 years ago I quit for 10 days. 10 whole days I didn’t touch a smoke. (Smoker smiles triumphantly.)

I guess I can stop here. It’s obvious to most people around how smokers and quitters like to float on their toxic clouds of denial. This might be good point to clear out those clouds for my smoker friends. (Also please excuse me while I type the next sentences in upper case. )

YOU ARE ADDICTED.THE SAME PART OF YOUR  BRAIN IS ACTIVATED WHEN A KLEPTOMANIAC SEES AN UNATTENDED OBJECT AND YOU FEEL THE NEED TO SMOKE. YOU NEED TO ACCEPT THAT FIRST AND THEN YOU CAN TALK LIKE AN EXPERT ON SMOKING.

Phew! There I can I breathe now. (Not the fresh air that I want to.) But that felt like a passive inhaled drag off my chest. Now, back to how strange and unintentionally funny these people are.

I have a smoker-friend who attended to me after a tiny accident that I had. She came running to see what happened. Her concern was genuine. So was her hug. She exclaimed, “Neelie I’m so glad you’re ok! I was so worried. I thought you were hurt. Thank god you’re not. I got so scared. I have to smoke now.” She took out a pack and lit up right there. I stood there passive smoking again wondering in my head, about who really had the accident.

Another friend of mine promised to quit on his birthday a week ago and called me late Saturday night. Now he’s not a church going person and I wasn’t trained to be a priest, but at that moment I felt like we were in a long distance confession box. “Neelie (Silent awkward pause)……………………………………………. …………………………… I smoked.” The weird sanctity of the moment forbade me from yelling “I knew you would” but yes I knew he would.

And then there are those times, after a big delicious feast when a non-smoker is probably feeling a bit guilty about the over indulgence on that last spoonful of chocolate dessert while a smoker on the other hand is dreaming of a nice long cigarette with the same intensity as a person who has loose motions imagines a clean toilet.

I don’t want to preach on why someone should or shouldn’t smoke. They are well educated people fully aware of the kind of toxicity they send down their lungs. And trust me they will always talk about that mysterious example of a somebody’s somebody’s somebody who lived till 99 after smoking 10 packs a day. And you have to give it to them, with that kind of a statistic of a 1 in a million chain smokers living till hundred, they have every right to believe that the odds are with them.

But for the almost quitters. The stars of this post. Even though other smokers mock you and discourage you and unintentionally smoke in your face try not to give up. 

Now I'll use Abba reference I made right in the beginning  to dedicate this original version to you,
“thank you for trying, and the drags you aren’t stealing. Thanks for all the joy you are bringing. I could live without it. But I ask in all honesty, what would life be. With you to watch, it's so funny. So I thank you for not smoking. Not smoking next to me.”

All the best.