This time it was Rishit CCC15th who hung languidly by the Chota counter, waiting for his dinner.Mess food was ok-ish but he had completed three big fat assignments from Amar Gargesh’s class the day before and decided he deserved a treat.” I’ve never done so much work in my life,” concluded Rishit, as he struck a match and lit his first cigarette.
A d e e p, l o n g drawl. Ahh yes, that good ol’ taste of heaven.
“One,just one today,” he said to himself determinedly ,thinking about the three hundred rupees left in his wallet. His heart skipped two beats :it must be his old friend,conscience,who charged him guilty of spending more money on cigarettes than his girlfriend.(not that he wanted her to be a materialist)
Inhaling, he looked at the setting sun, people talking in a distance. “Life is…” Rishi thought for a long while, but like a blinking cursor on a screen, the philosopher in him felt constipated today.
He was done with his first fag but that bloody paratha was not coming, Chota’s eik minute was up long ago. “Bhai yaa..” he demanded, “Eik minute,eik minute..”came the reply. There was nothing to do and he wasn’t in the mood to make small talk with people who came by the counter.
Ah, heck, take a second stick,to hell with this waiting.
He stuck the fag at the side of his mouth, strike, and that orange glow on crumbling paper.It’s times like these he thinks about Tharanum’s anti-smoking campaign, “Have you ever heard of a father gifting cancer to his son?”.
He really wanted to quit but being around other smokers at Chota was not going to do the trick.”Paratha and I’ll get out of here,” but if only wishing could make dinner come faster. Rishit was really impatient now, Amar Gargesh’s six more assignments awaited him back at the Maclab, to be done by tomorrow.He felt the heat of his second cigarette was close to his fingers now ,too bad, the second stick had run out on him.
” Bhai yaa, Paratha.. “
“EIK MINUTE,EIK MINUTE”, came that same voice from behind the kitchen door. Rishit looked at his watch, either it had been fifteen minutes or…
He was really impatient now and demanding for his food,he realised, was nothing more than a terrible waste of energy.
Relax, he said to himself, and pulled out the last cigarette in his pack. Shit, he was intending his____ to last two more days.Lighting the cig, he took a good,long drag.
The smoke glid down his windpipe, caressed his throat, fondled in seductive swirls down his oesophagus, till it finally reached his blackened lungs, to be stored as tar.
“Eik minute, ____ cigarettes,” he thought.
Eik minute kills.
