This post is mainly about smoking
and hence I need to put up this slogan “Cigarette smoking is injurious to
health “. A colleague of mine regularly keeps borrowing cigarettes from all
other persons at the smoking zone each time he feels like smoking instead of
buying the same on his own..and in spite of subtle suggestion by some to buy
his own packets he still continues live of others. The same person in the late
evenings keeps popping into my flat for having a free drink and couple of
smokes. Now this is quite irritating that each day you have an uninvited guest
at home and also intrusion to my privacy and space but then since he is my neighbor
and a friend I could not bluntly tell him that he is not welcome each day of
the week. Instead another friend of mine jokingly told him that all of us here
have come to earn money and there cannot be freebees on a daily basis. From then on whenever he come home (frequency
reduced considerably) he does brings over his own drink and the only thing he
still ask is the cigarettes since he cannot have cigarette packet in his home
since his wife would crucify him. Now days he maintains a packet of cigarette
at the office and he has changed for better.
On this note I am reminded of a
person with whom I worked at Iraq in 1981 and the incident that took place with
him then which I narrate now. I was just 24 years old and I took up an
assignment as a junior electrical engineer with an Indian firm that had picked
up a largest construction contract awarded to an Indian company at Baghdad. I
and eight other persons traveled to Baghdad as one of the initial mobilization
teams to set up the construction site and among us there was a senior
electrical engineer from Bangalore who was aged between 38-40 and all others
were in my age group. This person whose
name I am not able to recollect ( Let me call him “K”) had the same infuriating
habit of living on other peoples things in spite of getting much higher salary.
Initially all was well since we were just about 15 staff based in unknown land
and we used to go around various places of Iraq on weekends without giving many
thoughts to K’s habit. The staff strength increased constantly and in few
months there were more than 150 staff (engineers and office staff) and yet K’s
habit continued unabated and tempers amongst us would flare up but then since he was our senior and the boss
of a division we were never able to tell him bluntly on his face, though we
have been giving indications of displeasure in subtle ways…like if he is coming
to anyone’s room then that person would hide his cigarettes, drinks or eatables
and tell that he does not have any to spare but then K was equally smart and would somehow ferret out the hidden cigarette
and drinks.
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| Image courtesy Google Images |
Then one day when we all were fed up to the core we decided that we
need to teach K a lesson that he would never forgets for ages to come. This
task was left to one of my colleague who used to lose the entire packet of
cigarette K on many occasions and the plan was quite simple but effective. What
we did is that we bought a packet of cigarette and removed the tobacco from few
cigarettes and put in match stick head and refilled the same. All the
cigarettes were replaced inside the packet and left casually on the table within
the room. As usual our bumming friend K dropped into my friend’s room and found
the packet of cigarette on the table which he casually pocketed thinking that
he has taken it without our knowledge and walked away. Eight of us were now
waiting for the inevitable to happen since K’s room was just across our row of
room…then we heard a loud shout as the match flared up and burnt his fingers.
We guys were stifling our giggles and we did not give much attention to the shout and acted
as though nothing has happened and were waiting for fireworks to begin from K
but then nothing was forthcoming. Then couple of hours later we saw K with a thick
bandage on his fingers trying to avoid looking into our eyes. We learnt later
that he tried smoking five more cigarettes from the same packet and three of
the cigarettes burnt between his fingers. That was the last time that K ever
asked for cigarettes from us and for that matter from that day he totally
avoided us till the end of our contract….good riddance. Indeed a lesson learnt by him. I know what we
did was not fair but then we were quite young and this could have been avoided by
a firm no in the first place.
