Injurious to Health!

 Yes, smoking is indeed injurious to health! Want proof? Yes, now it is from the Mother Earth herself. Why, the Mount Etna is spewing fumes and fire again, an event with the molten lava, absolutely dangerous not only to Italy which currently seems to be engulfed by a ring of fire hidden inside the terra firma which seems to be erupting volcanically in at least three places in Italy and Sicily!

In fact, as scholars in the fields of geology and ecology put it, the earth is behaving erratically. May be, it is the tectonic shifts. Could be that the mantle of the earth is awry. It could even be the solar activity affecting the earth. Across the world, there are earthquakes of differing intensities on the richter scale. The earth is indeed spewing fire and ash! 

Unlike this natural phenomenon currently manifest in various places in different modes across the globe, human beings are adding insult to injury by vitiating the 'atmosphere' more, and further. Cigarette smoking, for instance, is injurious not only to the lungs of the smoker. It indeed vitiates the 'climate', especially for passive smokers! 

Yet why smoke? It is the ad blitz that releases a life style that is smart, appealing, trendy, 'modern', helps you be 'in', 'cool'! Remember the Marlboro ad? The rugged cow boy appeal, the daredevilry of adventure, the macho masculinity it oozed made a cigarette not just a style statement, but a logo of an upper class life choice with a special swag!

Advertisers and tobacco companies traded in rich dividends. Generations of stupid ordinary creeps, including even lactating mothers, got hooked to the habit, just a step away from doing drugs in the eternal search for a newer high, a quest that recedes further and faster than the horizon.

Does a cigarette relax? Why, in interior Andhra, workers, including women, smoke the 'bidi' with the burning end in the mouth which leads to impossible cancers. Yet the justification is that smoking releases tension. Well, does it really? In my opinion, it creates new tensions, what with the inevitable addiction, health hazards, not to forget the expenditure! Instead, better to avoid a habit injurious to health!

Pratima@May 31 is celebrated the world over as the anti-tobacco, 'no smoke' day. See,  this sane advice even Mother Nature, however upset with the wicked ways of the world, listened to on May 31 this year. No rains, no tremors, no thunder, no lightening. Instead, a great evening we enjoyed, full of music and celebrations, marking a major milestone in our family.