SMOKING
I took up smoking many decades ago with a lot of effort. At the time, it was a sign of maturity. Also, the brand you smoked, your cigarette case and the lighter you carried reflected your social status. If you watch old movies, you will see the heroine playing a classy lady with a long cigarette holder in her fingers, and the aristocratic male character taking a puff before making a profound statement. Not anymore.
I sometime suspect the whole world was waiting just for me to take up this habit to unleash all that propaganda about smoking being unhealthy, and even brainwashing people to think that the aroma of burnt tobacco is not a refreshing scent. Smoking appears to be the only point where the whole world agrees on. I, as a smoker, consider that a great service we have rendered to the cause of uniting the world. However, what I don’t understand is why we the smokers are punished instead of being rewarded?
Discrimination towards smokers has gone beyond apartheid and other cultural, religious or gender biases. Smoking is now barred in bars and restaurants, on the airplanes and sometimes even on the streets. They rush to write on packets of cigarettes that smoking kills but never on bullets, guns, fighter planes or tanks. Of course, all living beings are going to die sooner or later. In the case of men, one wishes that some had died much earlier than when they actually did.
I am beginning to subscribe to the conspiracy theory that multinational drug companies have drummed up this hysteria against smoking to sell their various new anti-smoking products. Anyway, since our fate is said to be sealed when we are born, why not go doing something that we enjoy than being blown up by the Taliban or the drones.
EATING
I don’t believe in the theory of us having unchiseled teeth and therefore being vegetarian by nature. If it had been so, God would not have commanded us to slaughter sheep and other animals to eat and later take a ride on them to heaven. Besides, I live to eat and not eat to live.
Ask anyone and you will get the same answer that they work hard only to keep the hearth alight. Study any revolution that came about and read their slogans; you will invariably find the mention of bread before any of the other social demands. Even Carl Marx’ wife once remarked that she had wished her husband would stop writing about the just distribution of monetary resources and start earning money to make their livelihoods easier.
Let’s face it; living is all about eating and since life is short, I eat a lot. I relish all that is considered by the medics harmful. Yet, the only thing growing in my body is the belly. I look like a little pinkie finger with a wart at the knuckle. That the ballooning shalwar is our national costume rather than streamlined trousers has a lot to do with our favourite pastime: eating. There is nothing better to end a meal than smoking. The long drags and clouds of smoke exhaled are the best compliments one can pay to the chef if someone else is taking care of the bill.
WALKING
I envy brawny young men with biceps larger than their brains. I console myself by recalling something I read once that described those obsessed with bodybuilding as being sort of ‘gay.’ Besides, it’s so boring, painful and tiring to exercise. I too, wait for the machine to come out in the market that will tone up your whole body by the flick of a switch. Wake up, America! Stop developing destructive gadgetry and concentrate on a machine like this if you want to win the hearts of those who talk more and do less, i.e. opinion makers and news analysts.
“I am a great writer because I know the editor.
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