Smoking Debut (Short Story)

Smoking Debut

“Smoking causes cancer; Smoking kills; Smoke at your own risk” Sahil could see the words and a disturbing picture of a pair of lungs all decayed and black. He held the pack in his hands, cautiously he unwrapped the seal of the pack. He could now see them, lines of sticks; cotton like material in the top. All of a sudden, “You don’t smoke boy, do you?” a hoarse voice spoke. Sahil was almost out of his breath. Scared he looked back at the voice. It was Sahil’s uncle whom he’d been staying at since the day earlier.

Shail was taken by surprise when he found the pack of cigarettes in his uncle’s study table, for Sahil had no idea that his uncle smoked. Sahil had no intentions of lighting the sticks and trying out smoking, when he picked up the pack. Most of his class mates were smokers, he’d stayed with his friends together when they smoked but he’d never tried out smoking for himself. It was not that Sahil didn’t want to smoke, he wanted to smoke but he never had the courage to ask his friends for a puff. He’d held cigarette stick in his hand before, he’d even tried smelling how a stick smells like. He was aware that cigarette stick contained tobacco in them. The only thing was, Sahil knew quite a lot of things about cigarette but he’d never smoked one.

Sahil’s uncle approached Sahil, Sahil still awestruck watched his uncle right in the face. Uncle took hold of the pack from Sahil’s hand. He took out a stick and from one of the drawers of the study table, he took out a box of matches; Sahil watched speech less. [STRIKE] a flame, the matchstick was ablaze; Sahil was still motionlessly watching as his uncle lit the cigarette pressed in his lips. Cloud of smoke came out from uncle’s mouth as he exhaled the puff he’d taken. And came uncle’s voice, “You can try one if you want to, I’ll tell nobody… Here you go boy..” Uncle offered Sahil a stick from the pack. Sahil was hesitant at the beginning but he did take out a stick and pressed it in between his lips.

[STRIKE] Another match had been lit. Sahil’s uncle brought the match closer to Sahil’s lips. Sahil inhaled as his uncle lit the cigarette stick pressed in Sahil’s lips. Immediately after [COUGHS] ahmmm… ahmmmm… ahmmmm.. Sahil felt very intolerable, he could not keep the smoke inside himself, he coughed out all the puff he’d taken in. Sahil’s uncle smiled as Sahil restlessly coughed. But Sahil didn’t stop at that. He inhaled another puff in himself and this time he didn’t cough, he exhaled a gust of smoke out from his mouth like any other professional smoker would. Sahil and his uncle smoked together. Sahil painfully coughed a few times as he had still not learned how to inhale the smoke properly. With puff after puff, the cigarette stick got shorter and shorter, in no time the stick had diminished to the filter.

“Boy, stop inhaling, you’ve puffed in enough”, Sahil’s uncle said. And then came Sahil’s content smile. His uncle told him that he had no intentions to spoil Sahil and he’d offered him to smoke only because he felt like Sahil would want to at least try to feel how smoking feels like.

 He told his uncle, “I am never smoking again” but inside himself, Sahil was making plans about what he is going to do the next time he smoked.