Holy smoke! Old wives won’t buy the tale

Every week, techie Abdul Khader bribes his 11-year-old daughter with a pack of chocolates. His reason? Abdul smokes inside the house when his wife isn’t around and he doesn’t want his daughter to tell on him. With the box of chocolates, Abdul managed to win the little girl’s trust and she too has kept her dad’s smoke-at-home habit a closely guarded secret.

But not all wives are unaware of their husbands’ smoking custom. The men try to hide it and the women always find out. “My husband tries to cover up the cigarette stench in the car by using a car freshener. On some days, he overdoes it and I know for a fact that he’s smoked in the car,” says Reeja Mathew, an interior
designer.

Once, Anil Kumar’s pants were literally and metaphorically on fire when his fiancée caught him smoking. In an attempt to hide his puff when she suddenly showed up, he hid his half-lit cigarette in the back pocket of his jeans, only to be warned by his fiancée that there’s smoke coming out the “butt.” Fortunately for Anil, his fiancée hasn’t called off the wedding, at least not yet.

“I don’t know how but I always get caught when I smoke. You may not believe this but I carry a spare toothbrush and toothpaste with me. Before heading home, I brush my teeth. But my wife still finds out,” says Praveen Sharma, a BPO employee.

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times,” American writer Mark Twain had said, and this is true of all men.

“Every New Year, my husband makes a resolution that he wouldn’t smoke. But this wouldn’t last for even a week. Four or five days later, when I take his clothes out for washing, it would have the strong scent of Axe deodorant. This is a sure sign that he’s smoked and he’s trying to cover it up,” says Sangeetha S, a housewife.

“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. My husband has gone to the extreme of convincing our eight-year-old daughter that cigarettes are like water for middle-aged men and that they’d die without it. So, every time my husband and I fight about smoking, my daughter takes his side,” says Sahitya, who runs a beauty parlour.
“I am living a sad life,” complains Abdul. “Before I got married, I used to smoke in my bedroom. After I got married, I used to smoke in the hall. After my daughter was born, I have been asked to smoke outside the house, and now my daughter is grown up and she wants me to go all the way to the third-floor terrace to smoke. By the time, I walk up and down the stairway, I lose my energy as well as the aftertaste of a cigarette. My life is one big mess,” he laughs.

“I think my husband needs medical help. Sometimes, he acts like a drug addict. To stop him from smoking, my son and I hide his cigarette pack somewhere in the house — mostly in kitchen cabinets. Then begins the treasure hunt; like a sniffer dog, he goes around the house looking for his cigarettes. Finally, he calls it quits, dresses up and heads to the nearby petty shop to buy a new pack,” says Sangeetha.

Bhuvana and her husband Ramesh are slightly different. In this case, both of them smoke. However, Bhuvana confides, “I personally don’t like smoking. But my husband and I smoke at social get-togethers. Since I am with him, I also get to keep a tab on how many cigarettes he smokes. I have strictly told him that we smoke only in each others’ presence and he has kept his word so far.” “Yes, that’s what she thinks,” says Ramesh in a hushed tone!
(Names have been changed on request)