I didn’t plan to say it.
It slipped out between sips of chai and the low hum of Delhi after Dussehra—the air still remembering the Ravan effigies. My brother had just nudged a plate of hot pakoras my way. Papa was settling into the balcony chair he’s loved since forever, the music of a gentle metronome against the tiles.
“I started smoking,” I said.
The sentence sat there, heavier than the sky. My brother didn’t flinch; he just inched closer until our shoulders almost touched. Papa’s eyes softened, not with surprise, not with anger—just the kind of quiet that says: go on, beta; I’m here.
He didn’t start with a lecture. He started with a wound.
“In the late 1960s,” Papa said, voice steady, “my Class 5 teacher slapped me on the ear so hard I lost hearing there—completely. For life.” He let the words land. “After that, temptations got loud. Boys in the mohalla smoked. Some drank. When pain takes your hand, vices line up pretending to be friends.”
He paused, watching a diya wick on the table, unlit but ready.
“I chose different friends—my values. I couldn’t control what happened to my ear. But I could control what I put in my lungs. I wouldn’t give my suffering another mouth to feed.”
I felt the cigarette in my pocket like a small, hot secret. I’m a neuroanesthesia resident—my days are ventilators and monitors, my nights are anxious families and whispered prayers. I know exactly what smoke does to cilia, to oxygen, to the quiet threads that keep a body stitched together. Yet loneliness has its own biochemistry. It hunts for shortcuts.
My brother broke the silence with a smile that didn’t let me look away.
“You hold a room steady when alarms scream,” he said. “You can hold this.”
Papa reached for my hand. “Staying away from negative influences isn’t about fearing the world,” he said softly. “It’s about protecting the room inside you where your strength lives. Decide who gets a key, Sheen. Don’t hand it to what would break you.”
We didn’t say “tar,” “nicotine,” “cancer.” They know I already know. Instead, we talked about small and holy things: showing up for ward rounds five minutes early; choosing water over habit; texting someone before a craving swells; inhaling the morning and tasting cardamom instead of ash. We talked about Ravans—how once a year we burn the one outside, and every day we keep vigil over the ones within.
When the chai glasses were empty, my decision wasn’t dramatic. It was simply… complete.
“Before Diwali,” I said, “I quit.”
No ceremony. No speech. Just three people and a night breeze carrying a new promise across the balcony rails.
The Hard Part, Told Honestly
The first morning, muscle memory reached for my pocket. Papa’s hand tapped once—gentle warning, gentle rhythm. I brewed adrak chai, wrapped both hands around the cup like a life raft, and wrote on a sticky note: I am a non-smoker. I tucked it into my ID badge, so every time I swiped into the OT, the words followed me.
By day three, my chest felt oddly faithful—like it remembered how to be mine. I took the stairs between cases. Every landing felt like discovering an old song. I told the scrub nurse the truth. She squeezed my arm and said, “We’ll keep you busy at tea time.” I laughed. I didn’t cry. (Okay, I did, once, in the stairwell, and that’s alright. Salt is how the body lets go.)
Papa told me another story that evening—how after he lost his hearing, he learned to listen with his eyes; how the world still sings if you adjust the instrument. I realized that quitting is that kind of listening: to breath, to morning light, to the calm that doesn’t need proof.
A week after Dussehra, I stood in the market choosing diyas—rough clay, thumbprints still visible from the potter. I picked twelve. One for every month ahead. I promised myself: if a craving visits, I’ll light a diya in my mind. Not a denial, a replacement. Not a fight, a turning toward. Victory of good over evil. Victory of health over disease. Prevention, always, better than cure.
A Letter to the Habit I’m Letting Go
You arrived as company. You stayed as a claim.
You told me I was tired; you said you were rest.
You tasted like relief; you smelled like escape.
But I know your math now. You only borrow calm and repay it with interest.
Today I’ll breathe my own oxygen.
Today I’ll carry my unrest to the sun and ask it to be light.
Today I’ll name you what you are: not me.
Signed,
—Sheen, who lights diyas, not cigarettes.
Papa’s Promise (and Bhai’s)
Papa: “I will walk with you after dinner for ten minutes, every night until Diwali. We will watch the moon and count our steps.”
Bhai: “I’m your 24/7 hotline. If you want to smoke, call me. If I don’t pick up in three rings, I owe you a jalebi.”
Me: “Deal.”
We laughed. Then Papa tapped his hand once, like a hammer : resolved.
On Choti Diwali, we lined the balcony with lamps. The first flame wavered, then steadied, reflections trembling across the railing like tiny hearts. I felt the smoke of a thousand old impulses rise and dissolve into the air—seen, not obeyed. Some victories don’t explode; they glow.
This year, before the diyas are lit, I choose my lungs. I choose my life. I choose to be the doctor who practices on herself the gentleness she prescribes.
Light over darkness. Health over harm. And the quiet, fierce joy of beginning again.
If you’re quitting too (facts and lifelines)
The body starts coming back to you quickly. Within minutes to hours of quitting, heart rate and carbon monoxide levels begin to normalize; within weeks to months, circulation and lung function improve, and coughing and breathlessness ease; over years, major disease risks keep falling. American Lung Association+2Cancer.org+2
Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body—there’s no “safe” form. Quitting at any age brings health benefits. CDC+2National Cancer Institute+2
Proven help exists. Nicotine replacement therapy (patch, gum, lozenge, spray, inhalator) meaningfully boosts your chances of long-term success; combination NRT can help even more. Cochrane+2Cochrane Library+2
In India, free counselling is a call away: National Tobacco Quitline (toll-free) 1800-11-2356 and NTQLS services through MoHFW partners. Save it. Share it. Use it. World Health Organization+2National Tobacco Control Programme+2
Tie your Quit Day to meaning. Dussehra and Diwali are living metaphors—victory of good over evil, light over darkness—powerful anchors for a commitment you want to keep. Encyclopedia Britannica+1
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