The Wooden Cigarette

In spite of all the rants going on about global warming it had been a cold winter in his city. It had been raining incessantly since morning and a snowstorm was predicted. The radiator in his almost empty office, most people had taken off due to bad weather, could barely keep his teeth from chattering. Time and again the sound of the blizzard against the windows would scare him a little and break his concentration. He was finally happy that the dark gloomy day had come to an end and it was time to go home. He was already thinking about the cozy interiors of his two bedroom home in which he used to live alone. Few sips of scotch before going to sleep would be perfect, he mused.

He came out of office fully packed in an overcoat, muffler and a knit cap. It had stopped raining but the cold and the dampness hit him hard and he decided to take a cab till 5th street from where he would walk a short distance to his home and not completely skip the only exercise he used to indulge in. He hollered a cab and shouted 5th street at the driver without even getting inside completely. The cabbie seemed to be in an even greater hurry and stepped on the gas as soon as he got the signal.

The interior of the cab was much warmer than the freezing cold outside but instinctively he put his hands in his coat pockets. His fingers touched a long slender object. It was a wooden dummy cigarette which doctors suggested to patients who were trying to quit cigarettes. He had been recently diagnosed with a mild respiratory problem and the doctor had asked him to give up on one of his most loved things, real cigarettes packed with the real tobacco. The doctor had advised him to buy one of these wooden lookalikes, just to keep something in the fingers when one has nothing else to do. Out of habit he put the wooden cigarette to his lips, took a long puff and released a large amount of imaginary smoke. The cabbie came up with 10 clever remarks but kept them to himself as he saw color return to the old man's cheeks. The wooden cigarette did work sometimes.

The cab reached 5th street and as he was about to get off after paying the fare, the cabbie offered him a real cigarette and some matches. It was an act of pity. To avoid the hassle of protesting he took them and put them in his pocket. He started his walk home lost in his thoughts when his reverie was broken by a large drop of chilling cold water on his nose and he saw people running about everywhere looking for shelter. The rain now was worse than it had been all day. He himself just made it to a tin sheet extension of the roof of a closed grocery shop. A lady and a little girl of 6 or 7 also came running under the same tin roof. He tried to not notice and avoid unnecessary conversation. His hands inadvertently went inside his pockets but this time they felt the real cigarette. He remembered the cabbie. He smiled at his badluck. He was trying to quit and people he did not even know were offering him cigarettes. All his hard work and discipline had now come to this. A cold unforgiving winter night and a cigarette in his hands. He contemplated and re-contemplated. He repeated to himself that it would be just this one last cigarette tonight, to keep him alive in this godforsaken weather. He was done with all the chain smoking he had to do. "If you start again after quitting, its your first cigarette all over again and its easiest to quit after the first one", he remembered the dialogue from a wisdom movie, as he liked to call the movies where there was no story but people talking about random stuff like coffee, truth, lies, sex, life, cigarettes. No story but people talking about life... cigarettes.

He thought hard but in the end put the cigarette to his lips and lit it with matches the cabbie had given him. How thoughtful of him to give me the matches too, he thought. He took the first puff and then the second and then the third. Ohhhhh... how he had missed the feeling of hot smoke going right through him. The nicotine refreshing his nerves and bringing that alertness in his eyes. He was filled with a rare feeling only smokers can experience, contentment. He smiled. His chain of thoughts was broken by a sound. The little girl standing under the tin had started coughing and was looking at him accusingly. He looked at the remaining cigarette in his hand and cursed in his mind. Children, how he hated them, always taking away the fun out of life. He stubbed the cigarette with his boot and walked into the rain.

He thought about his own daughter who had left him years ago. He needed to be alone that night. He put his hands in his pockets and pulled out the wooden cigarette once again. He took one last puff out of it and threw it away.

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I am not much pleased with the title.

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