Dear Cigarette smokers, I hope you are in good health and spirit. I hope your lungs are fine. I just felt like writing this letter because: (a) I have had enough tolerating cigarette smoke while walking on the street and (b) instead of writing and convincing you, there is nothing more that I can do.

Well, I don’t want to start up by using clichés such as ‘Smoking Kills’ and ‘Smoking is dangerous to your health’. Honestly speaking, you know it, I know it; so what is the point of writing it? However, smoking is not so bad because smoking gives you a new life-experience. Firstly, you will get that cool black-brownish lip. Secondly, your lungs will be bad at being lungs and thirdly, you might end up getting a lung cancer.

How cool is that? The ‘getting cancer thing’ is so elating because acquiring lung cancer gives you an opportunity to use prosthetics for supporting your lungs like the new Bi-PAP or a cannula  fitted in oxygen cylinder to help you breathe better. Trust me, you will sound like a roaring dragon each time you breathe in and out. So, do you want to relinquish smoking or continue it?

To be true, smoking does seem cool at times; more so when you watch some movies and music videos. Especially most of the French movies, which I die for, have one or the other actor with a pipe or cigarette in his or her hand. Despite my own cynicism, I can’t help but feel so positive about smoking: a feeling that smoking makes you look fancier than non-smokers. Nonetheless, even if it seems so tempting, I have never smoked. I, personally, eschew smoking because I do not want to shorten my life span and I do not want to ‘survive’ as a human taking drugs to improve the functioning of lungs, but I want to ‘live’ a human life with an aim of bringing a positive change in my being. And, of course, for that I need to be healthy.

I am sorry for ranting at all the smokers, but I developed a peculiar animosity towards you folks when I saw a kid, in his early teens, walking with a cigarette butt in his hand. I happened to come across this kid while waiting for a tempo in Gyaneshwor. A piercing grey fume of cigarette smoke got into my nose and I turned around to see who had exhaled so heavily. To my amazement, a mere 13-year-old boy walked clumsily away from me. I felt sorry for that kid not because his sensitive lungs were getting damaged but because the kid was not given a

proper guidance in the right time. The habits formed in tender age is very difficult to change, similarly there is a high tendency for his friends to start smoking as well, which ultimately will result in more unhealthy population of youth.

Just because you think something is cool, it might not be so. You are a human being and your life has value. Don’t shorten your life span, because sooner or later you will realise that all you needed more of was time and health.

Don’t kill your valuable time because in turn time is killing you. May you gain the intelligence of using time wisely and may you not affect others’ lungs through your deeds. All in all, quitting smoking will be your contribution to the world to make it a healthier and better place to live in.

Khadka is a high school graduate from Liverpool International College