Smoking - Smacking

I am a smoker. Disgusting habit, I admit, but still it’s merely a habit. I mean, I am sure that I am not addicted to it—which is always worse. It may sound like a lame excuse, but trust me there’s a big difference between the two. Addicted smokers can not function well without regular intake of nicotine. They smoke a pack or more per day and will rush to the nearest warung when they run out of cigarettes. Sometimes their hands are trembling when the nicotine level are low. On the other hand, as a disgusting habit, smoking is just another pleasurable activity not entirely different with drinking wine or beer—albeit mundane and potentially damaging for others too.

Because it’s just a disgusting habit, I can stop anytime I want. At home I never smoke. In the weekends I never smoke. I often don’t light a single cigarette for 12 hours straight when I am stuck with my work, and can’t get out from my room. See, I am still very much in control.

The thing about smoking is that it’s everywhere here. More than 60% of male population in Indonesia is smoking. I don’t have any knowledge on female smoking incidence, but I’m sure the number is growing. And despite the increasing negative perception against it, Indonesia is still a smoking heaven. Not only driven by the low price and relatively lenient government regulation but also induced by the fact that smoking is still largely a socially acceptable activity.

As a said in the earlier post, social acceptance plays important role in shaping certain behaviour—smoking included. Me for instance. I was actually brought up in a zealously anti-smoking family. For my parents, smoking is as close with any worldly sin as can be. My father—a national fencing athlete in his youth, a fitness freak, a devoted jogger in his late 60’s—despised smoking so much he wouldn’t mind lecturing newly met people on the danger of smoking, should he found them smoking.

On the quest of crushing this national pastime, he’s quite a family legend, my father is. There’s this story about him and his younger brother when they were young—him being the oldest son which gave him unconditional authority over the well being of his younger siblings. When he was 15 my uncle went to this social gathering with his friends. And one thing they did to impress girls was, of course, smoking. Smoking was still associated with being a rebel and adventurous—mind you, this is in 50’s when James Dean coolly puff cigarettes in ‘Rebel Without a Cause’. Just when they were showing off, my father appeared from behind. Without any pretext he smacked my uncle in the mouth in front of his friends, and dragged him home—while lecturing him on the harm of smoking of course. Ouch, a big set-back to my uncle’s still embryonic self-esteem.

Brought up in that environment I initially also despised smoking—smoking is only for bad guys. But as I grew older I met more people. And they were nice, decent, regular people. And they smoke. Suddenly smoking is not so bad anymore. As the social stigma disappeared, smoking became more tolerable, and in some situation even required if you want to be considered as one of ‘them’. You know how it was, we were young once. That’s when I started smoking, sneaking at beginning, more open as I get old.

But up to now, I still have no nerve smoking in front of my father. He knows I guess, but we have never brought up the topic. My younger sister is a social smoker, and she’s afraid of being caught in the act too. As she still lives with my parents, she has more difficulty concealing the fact—you know: the smelly clothes, drops of ashes in your car. But she got careless sometimes: she kept a photograph of her with a ‘cool’ smoking pose. Then, unexpectedly my 4-years old nephew, who’s visiting, found it when she was not at home. And he showed it to my father.

The next day, my father brought up the subject. “Your nephew found a photograph”, he said casually. She was stunned, knowing exactly which photograph he was referring to go. I’m dead, she thought, recalling the smacking incidence decades ago.

“He said ‘Sandrin looks like a preman (bad guy)…’”, my father continued with a shrug as he dropped off the conversation just like that.

His crusade against smoking has failed as he might have realized; me and my sister (and my uncle) are the proofs. Still it doesn’t stop him to continue the fight, starting with his grandchildren. Way to go dad. And I guess that’s the spirit we need to fight this social disease—seriously.

***