Up in Smoke

My mother gets paranoid when she sees a youngster smoking. She starts lamenting about how pathetic it is that the youngster fails to understand the implications of cigarette smoke in his/her life and so on and so forth. She just cannot contain her sorrow.

I guess this strange sympathy towards all smokers of this world (especially the young ones) is a result of the aggressive, incessant chain smoking of her husband’s that she had to endure ever since she got married. Hailing from a family of total non smokers - I doubt if her father or brother or other close male members of her family had ever touched a cigarette in their lives – it must have been a brutal shock for her young, tender heart to encounter a smoker such as my father. But since a lot of other attributes such as an impeccable family lineage, good education, fine character etc; favoured the alliance, the fact that he was a smoker hardly mattered at the time. Besides, most men of Kerala belonging to my father’s generation (especially those from upper caste, affluent families) were regarded intellectuals (and communists) for whom smoking and burying themselves in books were considered most normal.

Also at the time, I guess my mother was most oblivious to the enormous implications my father’s smoking would have on her life. Ever since she got married, my mother patiently and sometimes exasperatingly tried to convince my father to give up his habit. She persisted with her entreaties for 34 years, until a few months before my father’s death.

By the way, my father started smoking at the age of 19 when he was in engineering college and since then for many years, he smoked one of the strongest brands, Charminar. He preferred an unfiltered cigarette and he would smoke a minimum of 2 to 3 packets a day. He remained loyal to Charminar until they finally stopped producing it. My mother was slightly relieved then, for my father was forced to switch over to some filtered brand ever since. By then, you see, my mother had researched important details of most cigarette brands of the time.

Fortunately for my mother, my brother who grew up listening to all this fuss surrounding smoking never ever touched a cigarette so far in his life and I don’t think he ever will. He must have developed a thorough hatred for it. Surprisingly, it never affected me much and when my parents were seeking alliance for me, I never ever made it a condition that the person I marry should be a non smoker. As long as the guy didn't blow smoke rings into my face, I had no problem. This thrilled my father and irritated my mother beyond words. She vowed that she would marry me off only to a guy who had nothing to do with her arch rival, cigarettes. Again God was kind to her and gave her the kind of son-in-law any parents would dream of and well, he is a total non smoker!

My father’s tryst with his muse continued through his deteriorating health, age, job changes, transfers to different cities etc; He smoked non stop, disregarding advice from physicians, family and friends. Finally, at the age of 63, he was diagnosed with terminal lung and kidney cancer, the news of which he imbibed most unflinchingly. I am not exaggerating when I say he did not even batter an eye lid when the doctor told him he had just a few months to live.He continued to smoke until one day the cigarette, his most trusted companion of so many years betrayed him. His terminal cough prevented him from taking even a single puff. That was when he conceded it. How ironic that it was the cigarette that finally abandoned him and not vice versa!

At times a few scenes from the past flash before my eyes, my mother childishly showing my father some gory pictures or articles of people who had succumbed to various cancers owing to smoking. My father would not even bother to glance at those and he would casually dismiss my mother with, ‘So what? At least they enjoyed their lives while it lasted.”

In my father’s case, this is true. He enjoyed his life and died an extremely peaceful death just two months after the lethal diagnosis. He never had to undergo the painful treatment, which he himself refused and he never had any food restrictions either. He was admitted to the hospital just a day before his death and was not hooked to the ventilator or any such devices. He was lucky to have lived and died the way he desired, defying all bizarre predictions of a terrible death resulting from his smoking.

But my mother continues to grieve and pray for all the smokers of this world.