Ash to Ash: Thoughts on Smoking

The title of the post is itself a bit contradictory as I have hardly any 'thoughts' or anything to say on the subject. If I was slotted in one of those Group Discussion Rounds which have become the norm in most job or b-school selection procedures, and the topic was simply 'Smoking', chances are I'd draw a blank. What actually pricks me though, is my apparent indifference to the whole smoking thing. I guess this post was an attempt to look within and find out why I've never even slid a cigarette through my lips. But some exercises are futile, and I just don't have an answer.

Indifference is all I can recall during school and it seems to have stayed with me. I remember being selected along with a few others to present a set of essays on cancer, with a particular accent on the dangers of cigarette smoking. Seemingly, the more dramatic you made it sound the more points you got. What material we came up with would probably be enough to dissuade the biggest addict, but it certainly didn't make any deep meaningful socially-moral impression on me; nor did it bring out any curiosity and cocky scepticism. In another episode, one of my classmates was discovered to have a cigarette pack in his bag, which he claimed had been planted on him. He became a chain smoker much later on, and people remembering the incident wonder whether he had in fact started off all those years ago. I really couldn't have cared less; and still don't. Which is a little scary, if I think about it.

People often wonder why I've never tried smoking even once in my life, as if I'm missing out on a thrill (of trying something for the first time), or just being a 'good boy'. And it's quite amusing, because I don't have a rational explanation for it. To me, it's almost as if smoking doesn't exist and (to borrow a line) is like a road accident - something that seems to happen only to other people. If that was a poor analogy in arrogant bad taste, it shows how lost I am for an explanation. What could be the real reason? It could be because I wasn't in a friend circle of smokers, but then again I had enough friends in college who did smoke. Why I declined everytime I was offered a cigarette i don't know, but I have no regrets. Perhaps I had passed the impressionable age, but looking back practically everyone started off in college. I didn't consider it taboo either - I'm guessing there are more unpleasant ways to ruin one's health - and don't find the idea disgusting or anything. And I'm really not bothered by smoke and smokers around me. In my year of work at CTS, I frequently accompanied colleagues to the smoking zone (which was actually quite a nice area) and wasn't put off in the least by the haze around me. Seems like I've done a fair bit of passive smoking!

(To top it all, cigarettes have been lying all over the house since God knows when. Curiosity, far from getting the better off me, never even knocked once. It's as if we had this peaceful coexistence pact running, the cigarettes and I, so that we weren't even aware that the other was around. So I was never drawn to the pack, and the pack didn't 'call out to me' either - and a lot of sentimental smokers apparently like to believe the cigarette calls out to them.)

Since I can't arrive at any explanation, the only conclusion is indifference, as I've stated above. And that's exactly the itch I needed to scratch when keying in all this, pointless as it was. It begs the question, 'Am I better off not caring at all?' I guess it doesn't matter anymore.