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The day after I found out I got into college, my sister took me to a spot on the route between Dehradun and Mussoorie—somewhere around where I had my first beer. She told me not to start smoking under peer pressure, to do it only if I wanted to. Then she asked if I wanted her to teach me how. I said yes. She pulled a cigarette from the pack. I reached for it, holding it between my fingers—but with my palm facing outward, like I was offering it to the universe instead of myself. She laughed and told me I was holding it wrong. Then she showed me how to do it properly. I didn’t touch a cigarette again for a year after that. But life has its ways of messing with your head, and I was open to anything that would make me feel better, even for a second. In our third semester of college, a friend and I used to meet once a week just to share a Marlboro Red. I never bought my own cigarettes back then. My logic was simple: if you start buying them, you start smoking alone. And I fancied myself a ‘social smoker.’ College ends in 50 days. We both buy and smoke our own cigarettes now. One time, I called her crying, and she came over with a cigarette. We sat on the stairs of a closed bank, smoked in silence, and then went our separate ways. Not that a cigarette solves anything—it never does. But sometimes, it’s a five-minute pause from the pain, the reality, the weight of it all. And that’s all it is—a pause. Because it will catch up with you, the way most things you put off usually do. It’ll probably kill you slowly in the future, but right now, you just need the break. And a cigarette offers you just that. It’s a ten-minute break from a long workday—an excuse to step outside, tell your coworker about your old dog. Or a crutch during an uncomfortable conversation—the smoke filling the silence, giving you a moment to think, to hold back something unkind, something you can’t take back. There’s an intimacy in sharing a cigarette with someone. A lover. A friend. A drunk stranger at a club. Personally, I’m a big fan of cigarettes after sex—just not the band. The warmth of it lingers between your lips and theirs, a quiet exchange wrapped in smoke. A cigarette passed like a promise, a reassurance, an unspoken pact. Your fingers brush against theirs as you pass the cigarette—a fleeting moment, maybe just a second. Feels like enough, just for now. I don’t do well with birthdays. A day you’re supposed to celebrate life just reminds me of everything I’m not. Most nights, I go to bed hoping I won’t wake up tomorrow. So on my birthday, my friends got me a pack of Reds, tied a bow around it, and told me it was something to get me through the day. Maybe I’ve romanticized it too much. But I don’t see myself quitting—not anytime soon. I’ve been told I smoke quickly. Someone pointed it out once. I laughed and joked, You smoke for fun. I smoke to die. I wasn’t kidding. Not about the dying part, anyway. I don’t want to take my own life anymore. It’s funny—I had to grieve that. Death was like a safety net to me. Those feelings become so inherent, like a part of yourself, something that completes you. And getting better means you don’t have that comfort anymore. Letting go of it felt like a loss. I still don’t have many reasons to wake up in the morning, but I look forward to one, a cup of coffee and a cigarette.Like my friends said—something to get you through the day.

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