I quit smoking September the thirteenth, 2017. I wouldn't have remembered the date of course, had i not quit cold turkey, and with a vengeance. I smoked my last cigarette that big bright afternoon in September and never looked back. It was not difficult, surprisingly, and, to be honest, i enjoyed the rather breezy process of quitting almost as much as i had enjoyed getting addicted; it was a bit like film noir where the dominating mood is of doom. The human will is a wonderful and strange thing really. We have Hemingway to show for it! There was no planning involved, no contemplation, no nothing. It was one pure unpremeditated event (albeit propelled by other utterances and movements) that saved (and continues to save) me a lot of money if not added a few odd to my years.
Now the backstory... If you find it too long skip straight to the second last paragraph. My grandfather smoked cigars and cigarettes and every kind in between in moderation while he worked, timing to quit with his retirement from his teaching position ( the guy's alive and kicking, 96). My father smoked a few but never at home. He too quit unceremoniously a few years before his retirement. Suffice to say, they had little influence (or none) on me on that note. So I began to smoke in school. Suddenly one day it began one fine evening... One of those things which is now impossible to pin down on the calendar. It began with a few occasional drags with friends whilst on our way to and back from school. We were acculturating ourselves really to this new but strange found pleasure. It wasn't all pleasant to be honest, but we knew there was light at the end of the tunnel, so to say, and once we got used to the feel of cigs, we'd rule the town. Soon the occasional bouts of deep drags turned furtively into habit working in sustained and mythical liaisons with bowel movements, stress mechanism and so on. Soon it entered my household like some uninvited guest and the new normal was to smoke in the terrace, bathrooms, verandah etc, putting old spaces to new use. I never smoked indoors because i didn't like the olfactive aftereffect of tobacco once i was done with it... I'm sparing the metaphor that comes easily. Needless to say, under the noses of my parents and what i did upstairs was no aching mystery to them.
So before i knew it, cigarettes became a style statement, a personality trait—an accouterment of daily life in the modern, teenage world, with Barthesian implications, you know... like red wine... Feeling of warmth in the winters, cooling in the warmer months and other polysemic excess. The one thing you never forgot was to skip your routine smoke after a good meal... And god, it felt good! It was what i enjoyed most... well, one of the two things at any rate. I began to experiment with different kinds of tobacco... Trying loose leaves, unfiltered, coarse, smooth etc. I guess i even ordered a smoking pipe at some point if memory serves me right; Holmesean aspirations! I loved how Navy Cut, Marlboro and Charminar tasted (or felt) so those three were my go to brands. So, in short, it was really a ménage à trois with cigarettes and cancer. But i liked to focus on the wife and not so much the husband increasingly becoming jealous of the little arrangement!
By the time i entered college, i had already smoked for four years. In college, I tried to cut down the number to five or six a day from my daily half a pack. I found new cigarette buddies in college. Got (read lured) a few into this drag business with no exit points. Enjoyed smoking with the ladies, especially the ladies! Women and cigarettes were exciting things! As a young scholar I was interested in "cigarette literature"— works of art with references to smoking cultures, etc. Wish i had watched Mad Men then! Could've never quit...
At the University, i only added to my cigarette-buddies list... This time, veterans with ten years experience, or more... We needed to smoke after every class. In our defense, after heavy doses of Eliot's verse and Joyce's fiction, tobacco was clearly a necessity. We were friends with all the storekeepers, everyone knew us! We were sincere students and so we smoked with impunity! As if we had our scholarship to show for it- papal indulgences! making up for both the sins of reading James Joyce and smoking fags. Nevertheless, at that stage i knew all the tricks of the cigarette trade and there were no secrets. I cut down to four a day. It was part of a wonderful routine and cigarettes seemed to snugly fit into any routine or occasion. That was also when i got into cigars... i had a bit of a Che Guevara syndrome going on briefly for some time and i ordered a few Cohibas and a few Davidoffs. God, they were amazingly good! Quitting was never an option. So i stuck to my guns and my cigarette case and holder.
September the thirteenth, the day Michelangelo begins work on David, King Louis XVI of France accepts the new Constitution, and after three years of exile, John Calvin returns to Geneva to reform the church under a body of doctrine known as Calvinism, I decide to visit the Department of English to meet my teacher (who would go on to become my PhD supervisor), to pitch a few crazy ideas i had on my readings of Leopold Sacher Masoch (yes, i was considering researching on Victorian Eroticism... Sorry, Henry Miller!). I was no longer a student of the department at that point, having graduated in 2016. Sir was taking a class and not in his office. I decided to take a little detour to 'pay my regards' to my smoking comrades of yore from other neighboring departments. The cigarette was like my imaginary friend which i never had. I remember all the sneakiñg outs to grab a solitary smoke to the butt. The burnt spongy filters left a different sort of aftertaste when you pushed it too hard. I return to his office reeking of the cig i just ravished. He looked sternly at me, and said that he sees us smoking all the time but never says anything. The rest is a bit hazy to recall (i blame the cig), but he lambasted cigarettes in his own, inimitably academic style and I was subjected to a much needed, ten-minute harangue on the pitfalls of smoking and how it will kill you. I felt like Sacher-Masoch can wait for some other day for I was moved and convinced by this logic (obviously!). He asked me to commit to him to never smoke again from that point on, as i fumbled for cover, analysed the exit points, sought excuses, petitioned for extension in my mind and so on. He said NO, you either promise not to smoke from this point on, or go to hell (not exactly his words, but something along those lines). Well, there you are... your mentor's ultimatum or your darned smoking habit. Best decision i ever took and it changed my life, absolutely and I owe it to him (I repayed a bit of the debt recently by churning out a chapter recently). Friendliest and the most empathetic teacher i ever had, period.
So the keyword to quitting, quoting my supervisor, is COMMITMENT! You commit to someone who believes in you and you stay true to yourself and not break the promise. Easy does it really. It's an epiphany that, if you're lucky, will strike when you least expect it or not at all. Anyone who knows me knows i'm impulsive and for me things are either this or that... i could've never quit had i not committed and quit cold turkey. Tapering things down is never my thing. So there you go. My advice: Quit the dang thing... spend your money on good tea, coffee or whatever. Keep the "find what you love and let it kill you, misattributed to Bukowski bdw, for some other day. Also, you don't have "Post Office" to show for it. Maybe the story wasn't juicy enough (I blame my writing!), but quitting cigarettes are really non-eventful drab enterprises and no one gives a shit whether you smoke or not except the precious few who love you and would like to see you live a little longer, a little healthier. We die nevertheless, but that's a different story. We could try and COMMIT to life! most of us don't... or read Henry Miller!
Afterword: I'm now addicted to perfumes with prominent tobacco notes. Nishane Fan Your Flames and Jasmin et Cigarette by Etat Libre d'Orange are two of my favorites. My supervisor approves of this hobby.
Happy World No Tobacco Day!
(unless you are smelling it as a fragrance accord)
