I have decided to give up smoking, one more time-Aug. 21st,2004
08/22/2004 01:10 p.m.


I have decided to give up smoking one more time. This decision in itself has no meaning since the self who has decided to give up will be found sleeping or groaning, when my smoking selves would be exhaling smoke, poisoning the atmosphere, without as well as within. But this decision is inevitable to start with, for my intending self to assert and struggle, to determine his predetermined WIN. Will he? Can he?
Well, the first thing that I have decided in the process of this giving up is to obtain two more packs of cigarettes. With these two packs and the left over numbers in the three packs lying in my study, dressing room and office table drawer, the total comes to almost 50 cigarettes. In my case, these 50 shall make 100 since I smoke half a bit at a time using a filtered holder. One hundred is a big number to smoke and think against smoking. Ha! Ha! Ha!
Well, I have decided not to smoke more than my likely present stocks, which as I just now added up is 100 bits. This means that the two packets that I am going to get today are going to be the last two packs plus the previous left overs, as long as they can last.
No. Friday shall have to be my last smoking day. I am committed. I just have to ascertain that this committed self shows enough strength and courage to stand his grounds when my smoking selves would hit him hard in the days to come.
While smoking and shaving (or it's shaving and smoking and this I am so used to) I decided not to smoke between my breakfast and lunch (a gap of more than four hours) so as to give my intending self a taste of my smoking selves, a trial, an opportunity to experience the onslaught of these habitual selves; their arguments, counter arguments, approaches, justifications, temptations, and allurements. I am sure I can at least withstand their tricks and attacks for four hours.
I am sitting in my lawyer’s office on way to my office and I am so inclined to smoke. I visit here once every month, normally on Saturday mornings, and I do smoke. It's obvious that I will feel like smoking owing to my associations, and normally I smoke a full cigarette so as not to attract attention. Somehow, I find it easy to ignore this urge without much of a struggle.
‘The beginning wasn’t bad’ - I thought on my way to my office from my lawyer’s chamber. But it’s my office where my smoking self was waiting to charge and hit me hard. The moment I entered my room I knew I had to smoke. And it wasn’t just a subconscious knock; it was my body craving for just a cigarette. My whole being. My smoking self as my being.
‘What have you made of your self, Ashok?’ - I asked my self, ashamed and shocked - ‘Do you realize how weak you are when you really fight? You are weak and you have to WIN? How do you do that unless you declare yourself a WINNER before getting into the ring?’
But this time I am probably (out of my own weakness, I deduce) going to fight and in the middle of the fight kick my opponent out of the ring.
Hardly few minutes have passed when I almost heard a knock. This was my subconscious (my smoking selves trying to trick me) knocking the doors of my consciousness; saying - 'there’s something yet to be done. There’s something missing’. In normal course I, like an automata, would have opened my drawer, picked up a bit and lighted. But I am present. I know what was I missing. I know what was needed to be done was actually needed to be UNDONE. I am prepared.
Up till my lunch I had to struggle at least four times not to smoke. And shamefully, I must admit, I did look at my watch once to ascertain how much more waiting was needed for the lunch. Ha! Ha! But I did not rush for the lunch when it was laid in my nephew’s room. I delayed my going intentionally to have the taste of this little WIN.

I am currently Triumphant