From the first to the last puff

Once upon a time, I was a smoker, smoking a good (never more than 5-6 a day) number of cigarettes between 1974 and 1987. I had absolutely no qualms when I stopped, knowing fully well that stopping was the right thing to do. Never have I wanted to smoke since then, even when offered choice cigars at parties or when I saw exquisite lighters & pipes. My advice to those who have a habit – just kick it!!

My first puff was not from a cigarette, but a rolled up piece of paper. Wanting to emulate the macho smoker, the small kid that was me rolled up a piece of paper and lit it. As expected, the acrid smoke brought tears to the eyes and burned the throat. Then it was a longish kutti (thrown away stub) that was tried out by bro and me. Finally after a few months and after saving a few paise, it was a proper ‘Cool’ mentholated cigarette at the shop opposite Motilal School (close to Victoria College Palakkad). The benevolent owner of the shop wanted to make the quick buck from the students and would let us try out fags (cigarettes were called thus) in the back room.

Next experiments were with acrid ‘beedis’ that were much cheaper but tasted horrid. Eventually we got caught and caned, after which we were warned of dire consequences should the act be repeated. Thus we started trying ‘meetha paan’ till we got caught chewing it on the school corridor (subject of another blog).Growing up, our interests moved on to other matters till holiday time when Sreekumar, bro & me would buy a couple of Scissors from Kazhakootam - Chandavila and smoke it. All that was for the fun of it, the mystery & doing what we were not supposed to do.

At college I had a free run, trying Scissors, Wills, Gold flake, GF kings, Charminar, Charminar Gold, Charms, foreign smokes like 555, Rothman’s etc. My friend Soman was a funny guy, he got the idea of attaching a cheaper Charminar to a 555 filter and smoke it after the 555 was done with…There were Kerala Dinesh & Ganesh beedis as well on poorer days…Marco Polo the cigar which smelt heavenly, local cheroots or Churuts on an odd occasion.

I used to collect Newsweek advertisements of the Malboro man on horseback while at college. That was the man I wanted to look like, coupled with western novels from L’armor, this was the macho image that appealed. Little did we know at that time, the Malboro man’s real story…

For a while there was the Capstan brand which I tried, once I tried an ‘India kings’ premium cigarette, but I always recalled Eacharan our farming supervisor smoking the ‘Passing show’ that had a filter like band at the bottom, and then there was Panama. And there were strange brands like Abdullah #7 that I have never seen.

Once I started working, it was Wills Navy cut (made for each other) mainly till I got to Bombay and we discovered the Four square brand. There I stopped smoking for a while, smoking only an occasional brown ‘Chancellor’ cigarillo or a Rothman’s after lunch. It was around 1982, that Rothmans started local manufacturing from Calcutta, I believe.
In Saudi I moved from Salem Mentholated to Dunhill to State express 555 to Benson & Hedges, then Cartier and finally Silk cut. I was a light smoker though, not more than 5 a day even in those years. I never tried the Malboro brands that used toasted tobacco. Later, I tried rolling fags using cigarette paper, that was cool, but the fags looked like joints, which were very dangerous things to have in Saudi, so stopped it quickly. Brands I would have liked to try – Camels & Gauloise…made famous in books and of course a Cuban cigar!!

Then it was pipe smoking triggered by the Sherlock Holmes books. That was cool. I purchased a pipe, the pipe cleaner etc, but it was all too difficult to keep the pipe going. Secondly I thought I looked ridiculous and too silly holding pipes, so I smoked it only at home with a sniggering better half. Fortunately there were no smoke alarms in those houses, or they’d have gone off…

Lighters – Ah! There was a time I’d have done anything to get a Ronson gas lighter that had the flint flicked when you pressed the side. I found one eventually while at Saudi. For awhile it was the love of those exquisite gas lighters like Zippo & Ronson that kept my habit going.. History of Ronson.

At that time, my elder son started getting sick (lung infections) frequently & the doctor suggested that it could be due to allergies such as cigarette smoke. I stopped smoking right then, on a fine bright summer day in 1987, and never looked back…

Meetings in Turkey were the toughest, everybody smoked out there and the rooms were full of smoke that you peered through. Sometimes it was the local brands and of course the brand camel, which smelt terrible…

I hear Malboro has come to India. So also brands like red & white, Cavenders, Tipper & white etc…Scissors I guess still rules in Kerala where the word ‘cigarette’ is synonymous with ‘scissors’ the brand. That is brand recognition for you!!!

While on the subject, it is always interesting to bring up the fabled legend that the best Cuban cigars are rolled on the inside of a virgin Cuban girls thighs – Today visitors are told jokingly by factories that they don’t do it anymore since there are no virgins around. In reality, Cigars & virgin thighs - South African cigar expert Theo Rudman addresses this hoary old legend in his on-line magazine. “It is a lovely idea,” he writes, “but alas is a legend that has persisted since the mid-forties, when a visiting journalist saw tobacco leaves being sorted and graded by women who placed the respective piles on their laps.” The visitor apparently took some imaginative journalistic license when he later wrote that Havanas were rolled on the thighs of virgins. Certainly, this story hasn’t hurt the mystique-laden marketing of Habanos. “Yes, they would stretch the leaves on their uncovered skin, but to roll a cigar on one’s leg - you cannot do that,” Borhani says with a snicker. “I challenge anyone - man or woman - to put bunched tobacco on their thigh and roll a successful cigar.”

With declining markets in the West, and 50 per cent of India's population under the age of 25, the major tobacco companies are increasingly targeting India as their new growth market. 250 million Indians use tobacco, and the market's already worth a massive $5 billion. India’s cigarette market of 105 billion sticks a year is relatively small compared to China; 82% of India’s tobacco is consumed in the form of beedis. However, the market is still attractive to multinationals, given its size (200 million smokers) and growth potential. The Big Three in India are ITC (65% of the market), Vizir Sultan Tobacco and Godfrey Philips. Philip Morris already owns 36% of Godfrey Philips, while BAT has 33% of ITC.

So there it was, a little story on smoking – Once again, anybody who is still smoking – Kick the habit, It is not worth it..

Other related references
Blog that covers a number of nostalgic ads..
John Grisham’s book – Runaway jury is a superb thriller involving the Tobacco industry.
A review on the Malboro man.
Soon Indian warnings on cigarette packs will be gory…

Cig pack pics - various sites ack with thanks