Why preach when you can threaten

Smoking is cool. Smoking defines machismo. Smoking helps you calm your nerves. I totally buy all that logic. And after all, it's your life and your fucking lungs. I am really not bothered.

But then you don't let me be. You walk beside me on the road and blow smoke in the air around me. You stand next to me at the chai-wallah and light a cigarette. You stand in front of me in the queue at the station and defile the air that I breathe. I am not asthmatic. But I hate inhaling smoke like thousand others who do. And I definitely don't want to die of passive smoking. That would be stretching imagination a bit too far, no one dies of passive smoking, you would point out and laugh. So let me explain my problem in an alternative way.

How would you feel if we are all standing in a queue, and suddenly I take out my bottle, gulp some water, gargle and then spit it out all around. Obviously I do it in a way so that drops of water fall on your body. Disgusted?

Better, we are all sitting in a restaurant and I stand up, turn around so that my bums face your nose, and let out a nice, smelly fart?

I can take it to the next level, but you should get the drift by now.

You may say it's not the same thing. I would agree with you. And add that what you are doing is actually worse. The smoke that comes out from your mouth has possibly traveled across all your innards and would carry with it (in addition to the toxic tobacco fumes) traces of all kinds of germs that reside in your body. My spit or fart would be less harmful by a long shot. I am no doctor or scientist. I am just using plain logic.

So, next time you are in company of people who don't smoke, or in any public place, and you itch to light a cigarette, just be warned that I may be lurking around the corner, waiting to offer you the wettest of my spit or the smelliest of my fart. I never liked the concept of 'tit for tat' more than now. Good luck with that.