SNUFF AGAINST SMOKE

How fashions change! I mean, not how quickly, but how unreasonably. We were all snuff-takers once. Where are the world's snuff-takers now! Literally smoked out of existence, in spite of their valiant efforts to snuff out flame and smoke all at once. Sulking in the country where it is not without friends snuff has been threatening to stage a come-back; but it hasn't. In this madly galloping world of ours there are no come-backs, there can't be, and snuff knows it. But snuff has things to say against its triumphant detractors and must say it.

They say snuffing is dirty. Every snuffer, it is alleged, carries about him evidence compelling condemnation of the habit. His hand-kerchief, his shirt-front, his nose-front, the palm of his left hand and the fingers of his right, and (going nearer home) his bath towel, all prove the charge......but if only one is prepared to concede that snuff is dirt. It unfortunately isn't, atleast not more than smoke. What is smoke, my dear enemy? Ask any scientist if you don't happen to know. He will tell you that it is just finer particles of dirt, of the same dirt, dirt of dirty tobacco. And can you deny, you smoker, that you too carry about you evidence, inescapable evidence, of your being the devotee of dirt? Examine your once fair fingers, especially the ones that have been hugging cigarettes too much: study your lips, as you study your friends, and see how dark and dry they are, lips which were once so invitingly rosy and moist, lips that you ought to keep as a sacred trust for your partner, be or to be; inspect your clothes and observe in how many places they have smoked in imitation of your admirable self, leaving dark dirty holes behind; and then remember that all the harm you have done yourself is permanent, while a little water and soap can and do make us and ours as clean and fresh as ever.

We make ourselves, our clothes, our furniture, our rooms, dirty, we admit it for arguments sake; but you, you incurable smokers, contaminate the whole atmosphere. We don't send our snuff up other people's noses; you do, unconsciously, often consciously and mischievously sometimes. Have you ever practised toleration, a little consideration for the feelings, the noses, and the delicate lungs of your neighbours? You are lords, such sweet-smelling lords that the innocent, unsophisticated ones in our country hold their noses in your presence. And yet you don't learn. You won't learn. What is the result? Our Governments are stepping in. You can't now smoke in cinema houses; you have to ask your fellow-travellers' permission before you smoke in trains; you shall not smoke in buses; you dare not smoke near petrol-bunks; in short you cannot smoke wherever you badly want to. And you deserve it. For yours has been a policy of aggression, naked aggression against the peace-loving noses of the world. We would have taken your case to the Disunited Nations but we remember Kashmir and refrain. We don't want to remember Algeria because she is smoking all over...... Apart from us your enemies, what are your friends the Doctors telling you? A weak heart, don't smoke; a sluggish liver, don't smoke. An ulcer in the intestine, don't smoke; a touch of bronchitis, don't smoke; frequent colds, don't smoke. No snuff-taker has ever been so pestered by the people, Governments or doctors. Change, change quickly, friends, come back to us, the fatted calves are ready, we will stuff your nose with snuff.

If you are still hesitating we invite you to compare the effects. You fumigate (or incense?) the Gods within and, they and you become stupid and lethargic and go to sleep; you might call it a divine peace. You might even claim that smoking clears the mind. But we know that smoke can only cloud and darken; what you call peace, clarity, is only a settling of the soot...... And pray tell us, how can smoke ever illuminate except by ceasing to be itself? Now, see how snuff works. We put a little of our innocent looking explosive into our nostrils and just wait But what tense waiting (We don't have to ignite our stuff as you have to. See what a lot we save on matches alone. We would not have known what to do with all our money but for income-tax) We feel the quick fire running up our eyes fill, our whole being is supercharged, and then after a tremendous moment, with our whole body we burst. And the peace that follows is not of darkness and torpor but of purgation; our eyes are bright, our noses are clear, our lungs are clean, our minds are free, we see into the life of things. Only our hand-kerchiefs are dirty, but we have plenty of them to spare. But who has lungs or lung-space to spare! Come back to our fold, friends, we will help sweep your lung clean, with a simple pinch snuff.

Smoking, they say, promotes friendship. Borrow a cigarette and see. Cigars and cigarettes are so costly these days that they bolt rather than open hearts. But, even now, with snuff a mere anna (penny) will buy, one can enlist armies of friends and collect tons of love. At the preliminary raps on the snuff-box the eyes of the company open, nostrils enlarge. When the box is gently opened all Arabia breathes from it; the charmed friends begin to sniff like horses. As the box at last passes round and the fine powder ascends every eye is full of tears of joy and grateful love.

The first smoker was the first to be ducked; and he deserved to be. I am referring as you will have seen to Sir Walter Raleigh and his faithful servant. But that pail of water did not mend him. His expedition in search of gold on the success of which, you know, depended his life, ended in smoke. Which smoker would go digging when he could lounge fuming. But King James was no smoker, and sent Raleigh promptly to the gallows. Of course he was allowed to befog his poor head with smoke before he went to his dance at the end of the rope.

But ducking is the least of their contributions to the world's woes. They are the world's worst incendiaries. Cigarette-ends thrown carelessly (or deliberately) away are every year causing goods and buildings worth crores and crores of rupees to go up in smoke, no doubt enjoyable to them. More is destroyed by them in any century than by all the war-mongers of the period. Yet these, though guilty of arson think themselves the true gentlemen, and despise the poor snuffers who never did anybody any harm. Newman's definition was never true; more harm the better gentleman. But let me not be unjust to these smokers. They are good, but for them there would have been no Fire Insurance Companies. No smoke, no fire.

What in these civilized days is the human nose for? To snore, say some; to provide a safety-valve for the smoker who might otherwise burst, say others; to be the first to smell the atmosphere of one's own mouth, says a cynic; to act as a buffer for the face, says a friend with a prominent nose; to wear nose-rings says an ancient beauty, to give the face a right and a left side in the interests of symmetry, says an artist; to lead men and women by the nose, says demagogue, to poke one's nose in other peoples affairs, says isolationist. I prefer Coleridge's answer to the smoker, "you abuse snuff, perhaps it is the final cause of human nose." I have, however to protest against that word 'perhaps', though it denotes the caution, the tolerance, the humility, the philosophy, so characteristic of the true snuffer and so notoriously absent in the typical smoker.