Smoking with a Skeleton

For many a days, Afreen has been getting this sudden pain. A pain that arrests her stomach for a while and leaves her in complete agony for the next couple of hours. The pain scaled up with the passage of time, only to find the ignominy of a smoke-
addicted husband, Mubarak. Afreen was not possibly sure of the cause behind this pain, but she took a tablet as and when it occurred, and it subsided.

As time went on, she was expecting her first baby to the arrived in the beautiful Ahmed Inn, a bad news arrived. Her husband, Mubarak had some problems in business, and the tension had arrived in the abode. Day and night Afreen started receiving various tantrums thrown by him. But, what was more disturbing were the countless cigarettes smoked by him.

It never occurred to him that those cigarettes were causing a lot of disturbance to them and their relationship. Afreen started feeling this pain more now. The usual routine of visit to a doctor showed that the baby growing inside her body was finding it to breathe.
The day came of her delivery, and though Mubarak took her to the best hospital and showed her the best doctors, he was unable to save the baby. The baby born suffered a major lung disease and died of respiratory disorder. It did not occur to Mubarak for a once that his habit of smoke killed the baby. He remarried.

This real-life story is one of the instances where smoke or smoking kills a newly developed body and relationship bit by bit. What is worse that inspite of the education and awareness of its pitfalls, people do not understand. What is the cause of Afreen' agony? She tried her level best to comply with her husband' situation, but what does she get in return?

This comes to the important conclusion: does smoking really reduce stress? I do not think so because if it was, then people would have stopped smoking after the stress went away. They do not stop. It is more of one belief that one 'kash' can make them happy.

Once upon a time, my dad used to smoke occasionally, and now he does not. The other day, while he was taking a bettle leaf, I asked him "baba, tumi kene paan kaiyrai?" (why are you taking a pan?), and then he said that it helps him to stay away from cigarettes and so on. I think it makes sense to me now, for I am drawing a comparison now- which is deadlier between my dad' habit smoking or taking paans? I think the latter will be little less deadlier, but a fact is both are harmful and should be restrained to the core.

I do not smoke though I tried once in college but never felt that it would make me a hot shot. After all, if a puff of smoke can make you a hot shot then there would have been nothing to fall to. Anyway, the important thing is strike a balance between what you do and how much you should do? Also, important if this is something that can be harmful to a passive smoker, in this case the unborn baby, I think logically we are killers. You have to decide- kill yourself or kill others!