Tuesday, July 29, 2003

Snuff

After ages I saw someone using snuff. Sniffing tobacco was a fashionable thing long ago with the likes of kings and queens being regular sniffers, it seems. Though as habits go, it looks quite disgusting, at the least with snuff I dont have to worry about passive inhaling. My grandfather used to sniff. He would buy only this special brand of snuff that used to come rolled up in a small piece of bark. The bark would be folded with a label on top of it and I remember watching him come back, sit on the platform in the front of the house, unfold and adroitly pour it into the little cylindrical box. A very cute little silver box, made just for this. All hell would break loose if he misplaced it somewhere. I would often find him sit back, tap his box gently a couple of times, take a pinch and sniff it delicately. It is so vivid in my mind that I can almost smell it now. Who knows, as they start banning smoking in more and more places, the tobacco fixated populace might resort to snuff again. God help us.