I have come to realize, that I cannot let go of cigarettes. They complete me somehow. They calm down my nerves during building pressure, due to work or due to thoughts. A sense of calm and relaxation flows through me the moment the smoke enters my lungs. Even more calm when I see the smoke flowing out of me. It has become a part of me now, perhaps in habit. I don't even remember when it started, but I do remember always being fascinated by cigarettes, from as far back as I can remember, when I would see my father and people around me smoking. I would even suck on one of them cigarette candies from New Market (Calcutta) as a kid just to get the feel of it. And today, frustration creeps in when my lungs don't get the sufficient amount of smoke that they need. Not a want, but a need. I could live without it, but I wouldn't be complete. At first, I thought it was a mental thing. And so I quit. She made me want to quit. And I did it for her. And for a long duration, that. What I was basically doing, on a completely individual plane, was denying the fact that I was an addict. I am an addict. I ran away from it, only to have it call out to me for more and more. It's a lot like love. It's easy only in acceptance. Hence, I accepted it. I accepted the fact that I cannot function without smoking. It is a part of my being. Just like feeling hungry and then satiating it by eating. Every time you smoke, just remember that you are being disloyal to me, She'd told me. The familiar "Tobacco consumption can lead to cancer" advertisement/warning was playing on the screen before us inside the movie hall then, which can make your stomach lurch in fearsome disgust if you think too much about it. But I still couldn't let go entirely, no matter how hard I tried. It was the forced attempt to escape that gave me great desire to return, and even greater satisfaction when I did. And then the feeling of guilt engulfing me afterwards. Followed by the horrible realization that I had got attached to something so material, and how it was so against my immateriality, and how much of a hypocrite that made me. It was too much to take. It started consuming my thoughts sometimes. And then, as mentioned before, I chose acceptance. And I stopped running away from it. And that's when it became easier. Now I knew that I could smoke whenever I wanted to. This reduced my intake to a great extent, so much so that I can go without smoking for days altogether till I feel the need arising again. The guilt vanished, and peace replaced it. And just like it was said in that movie, every time I light a cigarette, I feel that I'm rising up with the smoke, as the world falls beneath me like the ash.
