Tobacco

You know I like this commodity, always have. I have consumed it in copious amounts in varying frequency all the way since 1996. I had my favourite brand as well and different points in time, it was Wills, Goldflake, Kamel (yes, with a K) and Classic Milds. Somehow, once I moved to the USA and started working for a living all the romanticism associated with a cigarette brand began to erode and I finally settled on the omnipresent and rather staid Marlboro Lights. It is interesting, however, to note how these brands captured my imagination from the beginning and how I came about to where I am now.

Wills was one of these brands that you could find everywhere, particularly in bengali households. While in shcool, I never smoked, what’s more neither did my dad…but somehow whenever my eyes cast upon a used cigarette it was a Wills Filter. It did not matter where I looked, whether on the road, in the ash-tray of the bar of the neighborhood club, in the white kurta pocket of my chartered accountant second cousin staying with us over some nebulous weekend from yore, or at the quintessential dusty billboard above the all-pervasive and decidedly Indian shanty selling betel leaf delights, cigarettes, chewing tobacco and peppermints. Then ofcourse, the brand value was further strengthened in my mind, when on holiday trips to Kolkata I heard people refer to this brand as Wills Filter or better still, just Filter.. “Dada, ekta filter deben” was a common enough phrase and had nothing to do with providing for either an atomotive filter, nor a water filter. In those days, it used to cost 80p per stick.

It is no surprise that upon entering college and agreeing to be led astray by a firm friend, it was this brand that I chose to experience my first smoke, in some ways, a strange baptism and literally by fire. There came a time during the month when my dad’s demand draft made in favor of State Bank of India ran out and there could be one of two possibilities. The first was to assume leverage, which is to say, make the betel shop cigarette provider offer a line of credit for his ware. However this was not ethically ideal, since it was common knowledge that there was no letter of law that could ever protect these poor merchants from default at the hands of unemployed 19 somethings. The other obvious choice was to downgrade. This then led to my tryst with Capstan and Charms. I chose the former because atleast it had some sort of filter, albeit not one that was very effective. Charms, on the other hand, was really nasty and it was like inhaling exhaust from a TATA truck on a dusty unpaved road. Iwas less than Charmed.

In the final year of college most of us already had job offers. In light of good times ahead when we’d have some dough to be used as we pleased, we occasionally did the upgrade to Goldflake, that emperor among cingarette brands that was longer and packed tighter and would last a good ten minutes if you smoked them like gentlemen. But really, it was always considered expensive at best and pretentious at worst. The real smoker, that had a penchant for the unbridled fragrance of raw tobacco would always regard the Wills as the el supremo. There were some minor distractions to brand loyalty that were always in the offing, epsecially when a really rich kid would flaunt some totally over the top brand like India Kings or Classic or even Rothmans but these were not a threat to Wills as eventually the limited amount of available cash always settled loyalties consummately. More confusing though was the odd instance when someone would get back from the holidays and start doling out relatively esoteric brands that were not even available at the usual sources. I remember one such brand, namely “Pirin”, which was marketed by one of the chaps rather well and according to him it was the equivalent of the Wills Filter West of the Caspian Sea and East of the Ural mountains. This was confusing as it was really not possible to independently verify such lofty assertions, especially given that the word Internet was as alien to us as the word Pirin in those days.

Upon reaching the land of plenty, and after overcoming the initial sticker shock, I began to experiment with other brands. By a strange coincidence, also attending the same college as me was the venerable gent from college who had sung eulogies of the brand Pirin. Needless to say, now that he was in the States his loyalties rested with another esoteric brand, namely Kamel. I had heard of Camel, it is famous enough international brand but no. This was Kamel with a K as in Krakatoa. Apparently, this was original turkish tobacco and was closest in taste to Wills Filter. Faced with the same predicament of not being able to independently verify this, I latched on to Kamel. I found it agreeable and so this was now my brand. But Kamel , with a K as in Kolkata, was getting more and more expensive by the day. At first it was $2.50 a pack but in a matter of months it became $4.00 a pack.

And so finally, after I finished school and moved to the isolated midwest, when I did not have to deal with suspicious agents constantly spreading aprocryphal folklores about cigarette brands, I pledged my vows to the Marlboro Lights, in a solemn ceremony at a Shell Petrol Station on Interstate 94, somehwere between Detroit and Chicago…and my marriage has lasted so far but I am trying hard now to get a divorce and be single again, where so many have tried and failed.