amateur smoker

AMATEUR SMOKER

I am not a smoker (in the name of god). But sometimes in my room I light a cigarette and walk to and fro. Holding a burning cigarette with the smoke curling up almost to blind my view, I feel grown up, intelligent, confident. . . . . . I feel like a hero. I take a few puffs but only hold the smoke in my mouth and then exhale it with genuine satisfaction. I feel the heat of smoke in my face.

After some time when the smoke becomes thick to a suffocating level (sad but true, I cannot tolerate the smoke, I only like to exhale it in style so that whirls up around me), I start to cough. Water trickles down from my eyes. I feel tensed. Surprisingly, this feeling of tension makes me like the whole feel about smoking even more. When I am tensed I think of myself as one of the screen heroes . . . . smart, grown up and tensed of course about various necessary problems (like the death of a lover, or her rendezvous with the hero’s side kick).Sadly though, my tensions are also artificial and redundant like that of the actors’ ,marred by childish extravaganzas.

When the density of the smoke becomes too strong to tolerate, I feel as if I am hero who is trying to see through a crisis(just as all heroes do). I open my window and let the fresh air in(or out? You never know whether the smoke or Dhaka city air is fresher ). I switch on my table phone and focus it exclusively on the open window to force the smoke out.

I sit in my chair with the half smoke cigarette in my hand. By now I feel very much overdosed by the smoke . although at this stage I cannot tolerate smoking any more ,I still let the little devil burn between my fingers. What hero ever threw a half smoked cigarette? Throwing away an unfinished cigarette is the ultimate insult for a man. But I dare not take another puff. Apparently I am in a state of cognitive dissonance(acting against one’s judgment).But glory be to god and to who ever made the table fan, the gush of wind from the fan exhausts the cigarette quickly. I know smoking is dangerous to health and have watched many awareness ads about it. But sadly they somewhat lends an element of reality to my tensions and makes me feel all the more heroic(after all ,heroes always defy warnings).
By now I also know that the human heart is positioned slightly towards the left of our chest cavity and that smoking can triggers a heart attack. I fell an ominous pain on the left side of my chest, I swear by god almighty ,I somebody had ever taught me that the heart is located slightly towards the right ,I would have felt this pain towards the right.
Finally I get up and walk towards the window. Using my thumb and middle finger as a catapult I throw away the cigarette as hard as I can. This way when the cigarette hits the ground, its burning front side detaches form its butt and the whole thing bounce off. To be able to throw a burning cigarette like a bullet from a catapult is another authentic pleasure of smoking. The moment the cigarette lives my hand I make a much broken promise once again, “this was my last cigarette”.