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The Meaninglessness of Life and Other Cock ‘n Bull Stories

 The act of smoking (or smoking up) is a sacred ritual. Dating back to ye ‘ol times of yore, it involved an old man, probably senile, and definitely hairy on the wrong side of the head, transforming crushed dried leaves and herbs into a portable-apparition device by the simple act of lighting it up and inhaling the white fumes. Puff-puff-pass was probably a thing back then too, definitely.

Air, fire and earth – the holy trinity of existential liberation in just the right proportion seems to free your mind in soul[1]. When in actuality, it chokes your lungs and wreaks havoc on… well, pretty much every other part of your body. But goddamn does it feel so good to breathe in that toxic smoke.

Maybe that’s why the first drag of the dirty nicotine stick every morning feels so special. That DNA-altering carcinogenic smoke tickles something so primordial, it wakes up the dormant gene that once resided in the (organic) tar-filled lungs of your great250-grandfather[2]. Like a near-dead addict reaching out for the one final hit before crossing the rainbow bridge. Probably only to be killed by the toxic smoke.

 

“Find what you love and let it kill you”

                                                                                                    – Charles Bukowski.

 

 

But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is the illusion - the maya, the abracadabra. Smoking after all is an escape – or a futile attempt - to escape the absurdity of life by weirdly inching closer to death. The sexy cancer stick, in a poetic way, essays how death is the ultimate liberation from all our suffering and happiness. Basically nothing matters, except – no exceptions!

Smokers are unsuspecting, unwilling philosophers. More like Diogenes and less like Ayn Rand – who live by their own twisted principles instead of preaching it. Also they don’t know what they’re philosiphising (is that a word? It is now). How do you explain to someone who doesn’t smoke that the first cigarette of the day feels like heaven and the 10th feels like you’re the cigarette’s bitch.

Every smoker knows cigarettes are bad. Neither the constant reminders of Mukesh and Sunita before every movie (makes you crave a smoke, really, those ads DO NOT serve their purpose), nor do the cancerous lungs on every pack deter a smoker. And not even a determined smoker. Even the ones who “only smoke when I drink” or those who “smoke once in a while, sometimes, when I’m stressed”.

In sickness and in health. In stress and in leisure. With chai and with rum. A cigarette is that constant companion whom you love to hate and hate to love.

But the cigarette? It’s built to kill.

 

 

Alt-paragraphs (to be read after the citation thingie)

[1] Put it in a hookah and you have the holy quaternity – air, fire, earth and water. Put a hookah in the hands of a troubled artist and you have the holy Captain Planet – earth, fire, wind, water and heart.

[2] The earliest evidence of smoking tobacco was in 5000 BC. Writing was invented around 3400 BC. Which means for over 1500 years, all paper was rolling paper.

P.S: I’m not an idiot, this just makes for a funny… fact

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