Courtesy of Choice!
The screen reads 'Intermission' for the 8:15 p.m. show of 'A lot like love' at Fame Malad, I turn around to my wife and in the same often repeated dialog I ask her 'what do you want to eat?' She says samosas and I grapple down the steps and head straight out of the hall into the cafeteria zone.
Look around for a stream of like minded people who make a beeline to this one particular place in any cinema hall in Mumbai and probably India, the smoking place. Lo and Behold! I smell the beeline and also see a board that says ‘Smoking Room’. And I think to my self, wow courtesy of choice. Make my way to the ‘Smoking Room’, albeit quickly lest I miss out of the start of the movie after the interval. I can see this nice door that has ‘Smoking Room’ written on it, I enter it and I find I have entered a matchbox. There are some 10-15 people in the matchbox with their sticks lit, in a 6 ft by 7ft room. The walls are plastered with film posters of movies that have long gone. People concentrating over every drag that they are taking in of that long awaited nicotine fix. Thankfully there are a few late comers who end up being the smarter ones and they stay out and smoke. Some relief to the rest of us, who are already getting a first hand experience of what happened in the concentration camps of Hitler’s Germany. I’m thinking to myself, so much to courtesy of choice, they are discriminating against me.
Nevertheless I eke out of the matchbox and move out back to the cafeteria to pick the samosas I was to buy. Not that this was the first time that I experienced the discrimination. All international airports, public places make you feel like a criminal. I find it nonsensical because I can’t evade taxes when I buy the packet of cigarettes. So if I pay taxes for buying cigarettes, how dare they treat me this way! I have a freedom of choice what I want to or not want to do with my life.
Now I hear that the Health Ministry in alliance with the Information and Broadcasting Ministry has decided to ban smoking from being shown in movies. Again who are they to decide on creativity, they can never be creative anyways. So there goes nearly 70% of all Hollywood movies and lackluster chocolate faced I’m an insult to actors become stars, what with thrillers finding it difficult to be made without having smokers in them. Maybe they'll add a new thing to the beeps and blurs to pass them through. Oh yes murders, polygamous relationships, and the rest of the world's evils can still go on scot-free, they do not have an impact on the impressionable minds of our youth. What they don’t have the guts to do is shut down cigarette companies.
Taxes my dear, how will the government fill their coffers otherwise. So they offer you courtesy of choice if you smoke, they will tax you, show you how evil you are, not let you get impressed with other smokers on screen, discriminate against you, but they will not do anything against polluting vehicles, traffic jams, bad roads, shoddy infrastructure, crime and all the other issues that I pay taxes for. Well that’s the courtesy I get for my choice of government.
Look around for a stream of like minded people who make a beeline to this one particular place in any cinema hall in Mumbai and probably India, the smoking place. Lo and Behold! I smell the beeline and also see a board that says ‘Smoking Room’. And I think to my self, wow courtesy of choice. Make my way to the ‘Smoking Room’, albeit quickly lest I miss out of the start of the movie after the interval. I can see this nice door that has ‘Smoking Room’ written on it, I enter it and I find I have entered a matchbox. There are some 10-15 people in the matchbox with their sticks lit, in a 6 ft by 7ft room. The walls are plastered with film posters of movies that have long gone. People concentrating over every drag that they are taking in of that long awaited nicotine fix. Thankfully there are a few late comers who end up being the smarter ones and they stay out and smoke. Some relief to the rest of us, who are already getting a first hand experience of what happened in the concentration camps of Hitler’s Germany. I’m thinking to myself, so much to courtesy of choice, they are discriminating against me.
Nevertheless I eke out of the matchbox and move out back to the cafeteria to pick the samosas I was to buy. Not that this was the first time that I experienced the discrimination. All international airports, public places make you feel like a criminal. I find it nonsensical because I can’t evade taxes when I buy the packet of cigarettes. So if I pay taxes for buying cigarettes, how dare they treat me this way! I have a freedom of choice what I want to or not want to do with my life.
Now I hear that the Health Ministry in alliance with the Information and Broadcasting Ministry has decided to ban smoking from being shown in movies. Again who are they to decide on creativity, they can never be creative anyways. So there goes nearly 70% of all Hollywood movies and lackluster chocolate faced I’m an insult to actors become stars, what with thrillers finding it difficult to be made without having smokers in them. Maybe they'll add a new thing to the beeps and blurs to pass them through. Oh yes murders, polygamous relationships, and the rest of the world's evils can still go on scot-free, they do not have an impact on the impressionable minds of our youth. What they don’t have the guts to do is shut down cigarette companies.
Taxes my dear, how will the government fill their coffers otherwise. So they offer you courtesy of choice if you smoke, they will tax you, show you how evil you are, not let you get impressed with other smokers on screen, discriminate against you, but they will not do anything against polluting vehicles, traffic jams, bad roads, shoddy infrastructure, crime and all the other issues that I pay taxes for. Well that’s the courtesy I get for my choice of government.
posted by Jolvin Rodrigues at
12:54 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home