The Smoke We Live With

The real danger in Kashmir often starts inside the walls of our own homes, where tobacco silently takes hold of generations.

- Syed Majid Gilani

Let’s forget for a moment the warnings printed on cigarette packs. Let's set aside the gruesome images of damaged lungs and bleeding gums. Tobacco’'s biggest threat isn’t just in what it does to the body. It’s in how it weaves itself into the daily rhythm of our homes, silently passing from parent to child, from habit to inheritance, until nobody even questions its place at the family table.

Tobacco isn’t always seen as a vice in the valley. Sometimes, it sits right next to the salt and the sugar in the kitchen cupboard. Sometimes, it's tucked in a pocket, shared among friends, or folded into the fabric of a working man’s day.

It comes in many forms: Ghutka, Naswar, Pan-Masala, the humble bidi, the social hookah. But they all speak the same silent language: this is normal, this is ours.

I have seen men buy Naswar along with their vegetables, as if it were as necessary as bread. I have heard the excuses, the familiar lines: “It calms me down.” “Everyone in the village uses it.” There is something about this habit that feels harmless until it isn’t.