Smoke of life

A hilarious letter my friend wrote

My Cigarette story.

My first fascination for anything related to that 84 mm white stick was born, as a child when I gathered from the litters on the muddy roads near my home, the magical silver and golden leaves that would iron so perfectly with an adolescent’s finger tips and nails. These would then be safely placed on a treasure container, a broken new plate collected from the garbage where my mother had disposed the same immediately on its unshapely arrival, which itself was a treasure in those May rain days, among other treasures like chocolate wrappers, a handle less mug, stones collected from various beaches, and beads from broken necklaces which were never worn…

The same fascination thrives in me when I hold that packet promising ‘Guarantee of the gold standard in smoking pleasure’ with words in juxtaposition saying, ‘tobacco seriously damages health’. Seriously damages health! How different it sounds from the usual “smoking is injurious to health”!

This treasure I hold in my bag or jacket pocket with immense pleasure and care from the beginning of its arrival; protecting it from rains and winds, and the eyes of my well wishers; wrapping it up in envelopes or clothes or even inside biscuit and noodles packets. The packet and its desirable contents go through various phases of hiding except when the desire and the surrounding permit it to take a peep at the loud, vibrant, put on world, before it dies its own death. Throughout its dying, or rather living to death, the white stick gives its killer the exquisite pleasure, the quick short kick, the nostalgia and nausea and the life time companionship that only they with the “impeccable blend of exclusive tobaccos” (as advertised by Wills’) can provide.

I watch the flame giving life to mine. The way that life eats through every cell and brown leaf of that cylindrical body. I watch the way I feed on it like a hungry dog feeding on a melting flesh, trying to grab as much before it melts completely. I watch, with immense satisfaction of a killer, the dying cigarette, dying into smoke and ashes in no time and on its journey to death, leading me to mine.

- Faraz Khan