World Tobacco...WHAT?

What’s this day is for anyway? Was my first question (obviously to myself as I stay alone) as I opened the pages of my paper. The paper, spot-fixing and Srinivasan news aside, was laden with grievances due to the sad demise of Rituporno Ghosh; a master story teller of Tollywood who touched national realms of film-making with his fresh and diverse stories and always voiced his opinion on his sexuality be it on print, on Tv or on Mir (Yes! The Bengali show host got quite a mouthful from Rituporno for his antics).

But today casting aside all these much said about topics my inquisitive mind pondered on the ‘Anti-Tobacco Day’ ads which is today (Or Tobacco awareness day; whatever it is called) and the question was, what is it actually? What was the purpose of the day?

Are we celebrating the misuse (or is it really its use? Tough question) of tobacco or are we celebrating the ban of it? Is it today that we should not eat any forms of tobacco or if any one eating today should be fined? What is this day serving as for us commoners? Coming from an engineering institute I have come across many subtle and hard-core forms of tobacco and I know how many people live by it. And although I ban myself from any such use the passive act really is effective (or so the scientist says!!! )

But please don’t give up after reading up to this thinking that I am going against tobacco today. No my question is to those that are creating a fuss with their confusing decisions. The governing and other bodies responsible for creating a rule and thus creating them just for the heck of it.

Celebrating a World Anti-Tobacco awareness day (Man! so much in a name) isn’t going to do any good. Even after repetitive awareness programs the sale of tobacco hasn’t reduced, rather it has notched up a mark. The government is making rules about pictures stating that they are to be visible on the board on the packets and on the ads of every single Tobacco selling company. Does it do any good? No but who is to listen. Today I saw in the paper that they have marginalized the highest dimension of the ads a tobacco selling company (and that includes bidis, Cigarettes’, gutkha and other forms cancerous or non-cancerous) can put up. And a commoner can only repeat the Akshay kumar dialogue from the movie Housefull2 “Arrey kyun thakreyo” Really why this Kolaveri D man? If it is causing this much pain in the ass why don’t you go ahead and ban it and if you can’t just shut the big gap.

Now you may ask ‘tussi ki hoya?’ Oye assi hoya to kucch nhi but.. The comedy of errors suck my life too.

For once the single screens and halls have started showing anti-tobacco campaignsbefore the movies that suck, the blurred images in the movie while a smoking scene is there and then the last of all but certainly not the least the chetabni. Oye jisko sunna tha they won’t listen; you are just killing my mood man. But who to listen? None.

So as the day passes by and the tobacco companies garner their collection even after giving 2X3 inch-walla ad and people keep dumping themselves in the hands of the cancer my mind repeats the question “What was the purpose of the day?”

 And I smile like Dhoni. ‘No answer.’