Hey Manoj.....sniff, sniff.....hey what’s that smell?
My God, were you smoking?
          
Those stunned eyes at the door look towards me.

My eyes do not look back at hers.
’’Ya’’, I mumble to my sister.

Why man? Hope Achan (father) & Amma (mother) do not come to this room now. Come down fast. We are leaving.
And she zips down, closing the door.

I stare at the floor. Shit!, my sis is the first person to catch me in the act. What the heck, I’m sure she will not tell Achan & Amma. I can still get away with this, I assure myself nervously.

The next time, one late night. I’m inside the bathroom. I realise there’s no room safe for me in my house, except for this. Sitting on the commode, I stretch out my legs and light my Wills. Aaaah! The relief doesn’t take long to spread across my nerves.

My mind races quickly through excuses why I need to puff.
It’s manly, it temporarily relieves me of my boredom and moodiness, I even read somewhere about a successful writer who faithfully indulged in pot to reach unchartered realms of creativity...

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK
My reverie is rudely interrupted by the hard taps on the bathroom door.
Manoj, what are you doing inside?
It was the voice I feared, my mum’s !
 ’’Why?’’, I ask hesitatingly.
Are you smoking?, the tone became more graver now. Silence.
C’mon, don’t lie to me. After you finish, come to the room okay?
And I hear the footsteps fading away.

Hell, what am I going to do now?
There’s no way out, Manoj. Face the music but don’t react.
Everything will be just fine, I reassure myself.

I open the door and enter inside.
My parents lying on the bed and sister’s sleeping on the couch.
More pretending than sleeping, I assume.
The initial silence in the air is choking.

How could you do this to us? Who taught you this new habit? Your friends?
No one here smokes. Is this how you love your parents? Mum’s voice again.

My back turned towards mum, I look outside the window blankly, nowhere in particular.

Don’t you have anything to say?
The question is turned towards my father.

Silence. My dad does not wish to respond. And I think I know why. He has gone through this smoky period himself when he was young. Maybe he’s thinking that I’m just in a temporary phase.
God bless his soul, I silently sigh with relief.

Smoke, okay? Keep smoking, mum continued.
Maybe we deserve this. If this is how you want us to...........

The remaining words are a distant memory. All I can recall is calmy moving back to my room, locking the door and falling onto the bed, head buried deep into the pillow.

A dumb pack of cigarettes is giving me more than just an instant dose of relief. It is beginning to create a permanent wedge between my family and me.

The odour of nicotine is heaven, I can always remove it’s stench from my clothes by washing them.

But how do I wash off the stench of rejection from my mum? This odour is acrid and nauseating. I felt it would kill me long before nicotine did.

----------------------------------------------------------

That low experience of my life was two years ago. Two years since I quit smoking for good.

Do I have any tricks to share with you on how to quit smoking? Let me see (searching my pocket).
Uhh....sorry, but I do have some big tips. Here’s some -

the support of your dear & near ones who love you
Its so helpful when you have a model family - family who never smokes. It makes it that much more difficult for you to continue with the habit.

If you are a smoker who yearn to quit, that’s one way. Here’s another - 
Attending de-addiction counselling sessions (from qualified therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists etc), REGULARLY
Promise me you will never quit the sessions (no matter how long they take before you meet success) and I give you my guarantee that you will kick the habit permanently. Self-supervision is difficut. That’s why counselling helps because you are now accountable to another person. And you naturally become less lax when another person is involved.

If counseling fails, it’s not the fault in the treatment. It’s the fault of the smoker. He quits midway because he realises that if he continues the sessions, he will stop smoking and that scares him. He’s scared whether he will survive the world without the reassuring touch of nicotine.

I had this fear. Depending on each individual, this worrying withdrawal from smoking can last for days, weeks or months. But it will disappear. Kaput ! And no, the world will not eat you up during the interim nor will you eat yourself up. You will be just fine.

If you ask me, I began to love myself first. Because, I needed to have faith in my abilities to quit.

And this is tougher to follow than to speak but if you do it, you are one tough being -
Surrender yourself completely to the sessions. Never quit these and soon you will quit smoking

I believe 100% of those who have quit for atleast a year will never go back to their Wills, Scissors, 555s or other packs of craps. Because, you will feel.......Free. Free from the handcuffs of nicotine.

Only those who have quit permanently realise that they were in a prison all along, not in a world of joy promised with every inhalation of the cigar. Today, as I think of those days when I assumed smoking to be so manly, I feel sick in the stomach. A shudder would be a better word.

Thank God, I am free.

YOU CAN TOO.