To be or not to be…

The other day I had been to the restaurant Blue Fox with my friend. While looking for a table, the manager asked us whether we prefer a smoking zone or a non-smoking one. The recent trend, thanks to Indian Government’s ban on public smoking, is whichever public place you go, the question that most asked is “Smoking or non-smoking?” An airport or a restaurant, and even some malls too, have begun separating customers who smoke from those who don’t. Good. The passive smokers have suffered all along. Let us give them a respite. Oscar Wilde once asked: 'Do you mind if I smoke?' Sarah Bernhardt, the famous French Actress, replied: 'I don't care even if you burn'.

I read sometime back that there is a village in Tamilnadu called Puttulur (or some such name), that is tobacco and alcohol free. No dweller in the village is allowed to drink or smoke. But I am not sure whether one should be forced by society to do such renunciations. As someone said, "If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually live longer; it just seems longer."

So determined are we in this classification of smoking and non-smoking spaces, that tomorrow I won’t be surprised even if we have cities or states segregated on the basis of smoking and non-smoking. The smokers, for instance, could go and live in cities like Mumbai and Chennai where the air already is so polluted, that no further damage can happen to their lungs. Non-smokers could stay in villages like Puttulur where the only pollution problem could be smelly people because of poor personal hygiene!

Mark Twain said, "It's easy to quit smoking. I've done it hundreds of times.” These days, I have quit smoking (for the last 7 months) and hence I am an advocate of this segregation. I am now with an uppity group having clean lungs that is also into jogging and health foods.

I was just wondering why not take this concept of segmentation or segragation a little further. Why not make this classification when it comes to other annoying habits?

Food slurping and non-food slurping... (sometimes the slurping sound is so crude and annoying, I would rather sit next to somebody from Puttulur who smells)

Loud-talking and not-loud-talking... (you’re there to eat, not to deliver Swami Vivekananda’s Chicago speech or Gettysburg address)

Throat-clearing zone and non-throat-clearing…

Unfortunately I am in the first segment. I always have that ‘Kichu Kichu’ in my throat. Inadvertently I keep clearing my throat often, I have been nick-named ‘Kichu Kichu Murali.’ Initially I thought I earned the title because of my sense of humour (since Kichu Kichu in Tamil means ‘Tickling’).


'Pan' spitting and non-pan spitting... (I hate people painting the walls in an apartment with the sprinkling of their saliva mixed with 'pan' thinking they are the Hussains and Picassos of this world)

Peeing-in-public and non-peeing-in-public... (sometime back when the controversy of Shilpa Shetty being smooched in public by Richard Gere was there, someone said “In India you can piss in public but not kiss”)

Gum chewing and non-gum chewing... (the other day while I was jogging in the park I stepped on the spit gum. I was trying hard to get it off from my sneakers and someone asked me whether I am trying some new form of dance!)

There is one segregation that I hate always. Old and the Young. The other segmentations are based on some activity. In this case one bases it on the age. That too the physical age. At least if it is on the mental age I can accept. More than anything as I keep saying, "Old age is 15 years older than I am". So let us all agree to have only one group - the young - so that I can always belong there!