Dagger Drawn by Nina Pillai

March 13, 2001

It only seems longer

There is a perversity in man that makes him want to defy death, and no single act can illustrate this better than the desire to smoke cigarettes. That most smokers start smoking as an act of defiance is well accepted.

Teenagers soon find the petulant pout or finger salute to be less satisfying than the act of lighting up. From there most who try it get hooked, the more aware give up, the rest are on death's rollercoaster but are unable to get off because they have become addicted.

In the early career days, stress seems to beckon at every crossroad and coffee and cigarettes act as the ultimate stress buster. Hip as young folk think smoking is, an older person is sadder but wiser when he is laid low by one of the numerous broncho pneumonial bouts that habitual smokers suffer from, or indeed a heart attack, or worse still cancer.

That a cigarette has been called a cancer stick is no strange co-incidence, the carcinogenic properties in a cigarette: tobacco, paper, ammonia and other addictives is a fact, which is too well documented to ignore. In the Eighties, as part of RJR Nabisco family, I was used as a guinea pig in the now infamous smokeless cigarette experiment. One evening the CEO of RJR at the time Ross Johnson, his wife, Rajan and I were privy to the cigarette world's greatest secret, a `weapon' in the RJR arsenal that would wipe the regular cancer stick straight off the shelf, The Smokeless Cigarette. I must remind you that anti-smoking campaigns had its hey day in the USA in the late Eighties, and second-hand smoke and its ills were well advertised.

It seemed to me that just as tobacco companies merged with food companies to seem healthier aka RJR Nabisco, the anti-trust law suits, that previously never stood a snowball's chance in hell were slowly gaining momentum in the courts. Ross, being an `over astute' CEO and `part-time visionary' thought the timing of a smokeless cigarette perfect! The guinea pig thought otherwise, sure there was no smoke but the roasted-versus-toasted tobacco (or vice versa), when lit, tasted `Yuck'. `Shit' was how the book `Barbarians at the gate' described the taste of the smokeless cigarette to be but not being an expert, on the latter I will not pass judgement on the same, suffice to say it was bad.

Again all tobacco company employees and spouses are encouraged to smoke and do so, strange, as they, more than anyone else, are in the know about the addictive delivery system that ammonia and other addictives to tobacco in cigarettes provide. I was and am still shocked by their enthusiasm it is now a given fact that women are close to over taking men as heavier smokers, I guess women have more addictive personalities. Baiting death is a tryst of sorts and the stakes too Las Vegas game table to miss, so hooked they remain. On one of the few smoking flights left on a fleet these days, I boarded the Emirates flight and was seated, much to my discomfort, in the smoking row, despite a request for a seat upfront.

The dilemma was that as I was yo-yoing between giving up my two or three social cancer sticks and short reversal spells of need for my stress buster sticks, I must admit that if anything guarantees a part-reformed smoker to kick the death stick habit it is to hear the Ho! Ho! Ho! cough of a habitual smoker. Second-hand smoke syndrome is doubly annoying when one has even temporarily abandoned the habit.

After the flight, and close on the heels of the Government ban on cigarette advertising and smoking in public, I was on a self-imposed ban till recently, when I wilfully encountered a stress situation only to promptly light up Shame! death defying I am not, so I hope to beat the habit before it beats me, in the near future, tomorrow perhaps? Anyway, till then I take refuge in these famous last words If you give up Smoking, Drinking and Loving you don't live longer, it only seems longer.