What does it feel like to go from 65 cigarettes a day to zero? Celebrity hairstylist Sapna Bhavnani's honest confessions on kicking the butt and hanging on to 'cool'
What does it feel like to go from 65 cigarettes a day to zero? Celebrity hairstylist Sapna Bhavnani's honest confessions on kicking the butt and hanging on to 'cool'65 "some" days ago (they say when you stop counting the days, you succeed. So, I decided to throw in the "some" and begin a new chapter in my life. A chapter without the cancer stick between my fingers.
It was a decision I took when the doc showed me "the black hole" behind my heart on a chest X-ray. @$%#@ Shite! Because to be honest, I couldn't remember a day in my life without a cigarette in hand.
Since I was a little girl, and God knows that was a long time ago, I thought Smoking was next to Godliness. Every morning, the smell of a cigarette lit in one corner mixed with the aroma of an agarbatti in another, made me feel home.
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I would watch my dad smoke and observed his every move. So it wasn't a big surprise that my first cigarette was from my father's packet at 14. I stood by the window just like he did, and looked out through the cloud of smoke with a smirk. "I could get used to this!" And I did!
Back tou00a0 the day I quit cold turkey. I threw my packu00a0 in the trash dramatically, and said "so long cancer, I choose life." I'm sure all of us have done this at least once in our smoking lifetime. I looked straight into the mirror, and stood strong and mean.u00a0u00a0u00a0
The plan was not to become one of those anal new non-smokers and hate everything about smoking to make my newu00a0 life feel better. It was, instead to live in harmony with my smoking comrades and make life difficult because I was cool and could handle it. Right? Right!
On day 37, I made my first bar excursion. This is when things changed for me, the Cool Non Smoker. I headed straight for my friends, a group also known as "the smokers", and stood around with nothing in my hands, not even a drink.
I flung my arms around like nunchucks at every excitable line just to show the smokers I was cool too. More smokers joined in and I stood my ground, flinging them arms till kingdom come. And then it happened. One moronic smoking stranger said: "Let me get this straight.
You drink once in a month, don't do drugs, and now, you don't even smoke...so what do you do? I thought you were Sapna Bhavnani..the ultimate rebel...the cool cat leading the oestrogen pack in this country..!" "You thought like any idiot who stereotypes.." I said and walked away (hands tucked deep inside my pockets).
For the last 28 "some" days since the incident, I have spent every day questioning my cool quotient. There is some truth when non-smokers accuse movies and ads for making smoking cool. Yes, maybe this is the first time I speak like a non-smoker, but it's true. I wake up every morning blaming myself for being sober.
I stopped going out for the fear that I don't fit. I don't even hang out with my friends in case they think I am uncool. Yes, I know this sounds really stupid but I cannot help feeling so uncool in my coolness. So here I am, sitting in my pyjamas, sipping on my cup of coffee knowing fully well that a cigarette would probably make the scene picture-perfect, but I will "choose life."u00a0
Secret: "Being cool was never a look anyway, it is a state of mind."
