As usual on Friday evenings Rakesh goes to the neighborhood irani café in the sleepy suburban area of old city to meet his old friends smoking his favorite brand of cigarettes sipping the hot chai. For the past few weeks he was completely stuck in the office for the project he was working on which was in the final stages of completion. Thank God! The task had been successfully completed and he was now free for atleast a week. This was usual for the software employees like him. He belongs to a small town from coastal Andhra similar to most of his friends and colleagues who had come for work in this city of pearls. The irani café owner knows him very well and his bunch of friends.
His smoking addiction started during college when smoking was considered to be fashion and style. Puffs of smoke filled his hostel room during college days. He was always lauded the way he made shapes with the smoke releasing it from his mouth and nostrils sometimes. His friends mostly constituted of smokers and drinkers but he liked the company of these people because most of them are intelligent like him or atleast they felt so. This addiction to smoking had made him loose his beautiful girlfriend and also angered his parents. He was close to finish off two to three packs in a day. It was unusual to find him without a cigarette.
Later when he had joined the meditation and yoga classes through his uncle whom he admired a lot he was temporarily out of smoking. As they say everything has a first time he became a smoker again with a lesser intensity, this time around four to five cigarettes a day. This basically started out with his boss in the company who had offered him a cigarette on the very next day of his joining the company which he could not reject. Thus started the saga of Rakesh’s smoking once again.
Now that the project had come to an end, he was deeply relaxing sipping the chai at nawab’s café. His friends have to come in about half an hour so. They are all childhood friends and meet regularly on fridays at the nawab’s place which is their favourite spot. Nawab’s was a small chai baddi in good old city of Hyderabad. He had grown from being a small chai baddi to a big café in the corner. His sons chotta nawab and khan had parted ways and put up separate café’s at different locations. The chotta nawab runs the old nawab’s café whereas khan has a restaurant in secunderabad.
It was around 6.30pm when all of the friends were busy chatting about their days’ work. One of them suggested they all go to the Madhushala Bar. The Madhushala situated inside the street was a place for all the smokers and drinkers. Usually localites hang out there after days work. It is a place filled with laughter, chatter occasional shouts by the drunkards and seems like a heaven for all the drunken. Madhushala Bar had been notorious at one point of time because of its night club activities but due to government rules now it had transformed into the new Madhushala bar and restaurant. One can find some regular loyal customers to the bar.
Rakesh and his friends have started on their bikes to arrive at the bar. As it is a norm for them to order a common round of drinks starting the session with their favorite rum, they ordered snacks to munch on along with the drink. After a round of drinking and blabbering, Rakesh took out a cigarette from his pack which he always carried along with him. The waiter who was around serving the second round of drinks immediately warned him not to light it inside the premises of the bar this angered Rakesh but he reconciled to the fact which he has seen in the news about the ban on smoking at public places. In India as it is a common practice to break the rules he did not think that this rule would be so strictly applied even to the bars which were usually smoker’s heaven. Rakesh as such is a kind of person who gets anger but subsides immediately as he cannot fight anybody owing to the principle of non violence nah! He does not have the physical strength and internally is actually timid. He actually covers up such facts in his conversations.
He has immediately stood up along with his another smoker friend, Pranav as such is a non smoker but he takes passive smoking too much seriously and is habituated to passive smoking. It is not his intention to become a passive smoker but only a precaution from becoming an active smoker. During his childhood Pranav was a kid who never knew what it was like being away from house, he was also not a regular sports person like his friends but a very studious child. Due to teenage fantasies he had lost interest in studies in his plus two and has not fared well in the competitive exams due to which he had landed up in a not very good college. He had altogether different company of friends and there he was taught to drinking. He tried smoking but only thing he got was cough and two days of medication. Thereafter he stopped smoking but eventually got used to passive smoking.
Now that they were smoking heavily and discussing issues at work place Rakesh thought about his lost girlfriend for a while and was asking about her whereabouts nowadays. Rakesh’s girlfriend mona works for the same company as Pranav. Mona loved Rakesh but due to his addiction to smoking she quit her relationship with him and is now happily married to a non smoker husband who also happens to work with Mona in the same office. After that incident Rakesh never loved another woman.
They both went inside the bar and mingled with their other two friends who were seriously discussing about politics. Ram was a person who has very strong views on politics in fact he is planning to take up permanent job at one of the parties. He has his family’s support to join full time politics. Ram had been doing many social activities and had contacts in the ruling party of the state. He loves chatting with friends and always loves winning at arguments involving politics. Chaitu the other friend who loves drinking is a silent listener to all that ram blabbers and boasts of politics. He is the most silent person in the group after Rakesh.
The group had just finished the last round of drinks and were asked to leave the bar or else thrown out of it as the time’s up. They were the last persons to leave the bar. As they came out Rakesh felt urgency to light the cigarette and as he fetched for it immediately he was warned by a cop nearby not to smoke in public places. He left abusing the constable and guided the group in search of a private corner or private place. They went to the next street corner where in they took out the cigarette but soon there arrived a bunch of people in a marriage procession, pissed off they drove to the next junction and as soon as they arrived they noticed the commissioner of police building staring at them ferociously.
This time they thought of a nice place to smoke that is the turning near to the necklace road which is notorious at one time. As they were about to light the cigarettes there were whistles blowing police chasing couples who were engaged in secret love making intimacy. Rakesh and his group had to immediately leave that so called private public place in search of another. Finally Pranav declared they will got to his place as he stays alone nobody is there to question them but unfortunately at his place the gates were locked by the house owner and there is no point in jumping the wall either because that would wake up the bull dog tied in the compound.
Despair and frustration were telling upon all of them when all of a sudden they found a secret building hiding in the dark shadows of night. An old dilapidated building which was about to get demolished soon to build flats. An old man is in charge of supervising it day and night he does nothing but drink all day and night. So it was easy for them to barge in and get to the terrace. As soon as they arrived at the top of the 5 storeyed building Rakesh felt a relief and the view of moonlight and city’s outline from the top was mesmerizing. All of them stared at the beauty of the city which is sleeping silently at around 1am. Cold winds were blowing and immediately they required the smoke to keep them warm, Rakesh took out the pack and put the cigarette in between his lips, suddenly he realized he was not having a match box or lighter to light the cigarette.
This was too much for him to handle, he searched everybody’s pockets and ran down stairs frantically. Mad with not finding a match stick he was sick and tired. Pranav, Ram and Chaitu were also in the same state and were desperately looking for a matchbox. Finally after two hours of unfruitful search a great idea dawned upon them, to search the old man’s stinky pockets in hope of finding atleast a match box with one or two matches.
With this great thought that landed upon Rakesh’ already frustrated mind pranav decided he will go and search the old man’s pockets. The three waited with bated breath as pranav was approaching the old man’s cot. The man was around 60 years old with a darker complexion and white stubble and moustache thick enough to scare a 12 year old kid. He was fast asleep lying on his stomach, his right hand hanging loosely from the bed. As Pranav approached nearer the old man moved a little and this made Pranav retract but his friends hinted everything’s okay from the terrace. Pranav now crouching and crawling went near the bed and slid his hand through the pocket to his excitement he found the match box and in a hurry pulled his hand to which the old man twisted and his hand got underneath.
Landed in a fix he waited for sometime and then easily moved his hand that gave the old man a push slighter than a blow of wind and this made him uncurl and pranav removed his hand immediately ran to the top of the building.
As if he had won the race in Olympics he came to the top tossing the matchbox into the hands of Rakesh claiming his prize. As the four of them sat at the edge of the parapet wall of the old building with lighted cigarettes finally in between their lips they had seen the most beautiful view through the fumes, the sunlight in an orange and saffron colored sky just like the tip of their burning cigarettes.
