Monday, May 17, 2010

WHOSE PACK IS IT ANYWAY……..


Cigarette is a friend, is an enemy, can kill you, can save you, is a time pass, is a need, is nothing, but everything sometimes. I love the smell of newly lit cigarette and also of the freshly stubbed. I like those youngsters, who feel proud after smoking one, I like those aged men, who smoke it with “been there, done that” feel. Cigarette is taking up many lives but surely is saving mine. Yes, I love to smoke.

On that usual normal sunny day, the sun was playing games with the clouds to make the day not so usually normal. I had woken up quite early, but had left my room only in the afternoon and that only because of the cigarette. I went outside and bought a pack, a pack of twenty.

Next day it seemed clouds had won the battle and it was the perfect clichéd romantic weather. The birds chirped, the green leaves waved at me , a hawker passed by, my TV said random things, my favorite tree just stared at me as always and I smoked the last one of those twenty. It actually happens, the habit of thinking just shoots up with the day’s first and the pack’s last cigarette.

I saw the empty pack and tried to remember all of those who were beautifully placed once inside the pack. I remembered the one, the first one of those I had smoked alone near the cigarette shop. The frail dark shopkeeper had spared a few glances, but hadn’t uttered a word. May be he found no reason to do so, and yes shouldn’t we do everything for a reason? Luckily I didn’t go there and moved on with the same thought and I remembered the one I had smoked with her, while her legs were beautifully crossed and her long slender hand gently placed on them. Interestingly every time she had nothing to say, her eyes met mine, and all other time she had something to say about some random stuff. As soon as she had gone I had lit up another one. Somehow it tasted better than all the previous ones.

I remembered the one I had in my room while I read a book, sat quietly and thought about some mundane incident simultaneously, before I went to bed.

Out of those twenty I remember only four to five, and I wonder why when they say all the cigarettes in the pack are totally same, to the last of the detail.