Phantom cigarettes, washable tattoos and BOOMER
Let me take you back to my 90s childhood. Liberalization had just hit India and two wise men were about to meet. He was 8. I was 6 and our story begins…
I was his buddy when he was done playing all the sports and games with all the friends he had. We will be talking about yet another cousin today.
Our house was easily a kilometer apart but it was perfectly normal to let kids run around the neighborhood by themselves and not be worried if they’d be shot down every other day, at least in that part of the world in the 90s.
It was a pretty empty road with very little civilization sprouting in the form of wholesalers who sold oil or grains, several paan thellas that played this on repeat, a pharmacy that also dispensed unsolicited medical advice, the only grocery store in the vicinity that served both Phantom sweet cigarettes AND (Boom Boom) Boomer that gave a free tattoo in the wrapper to every kid in the recently liberalized India who could afford that occasional luxury. At 6, I well on track to be a ganglord. A combination of poor life choices and incompetence made me settle for a tech job. That, and the tattoo faded in 3 washes and I had to wait for the next one for 3 months. But you never forget the first…
We had met at a barren land between our houses. He examined me with a screening gaze then put his right leg on a rock and looked away. Then slid his right hand in the pocket and pulled out a pack of Phantom.
“What is that?” I asked with the curiosity typical to any six-year old.
“It’s a pack of cigarettes” he responded with a wisdom, atypical to any eight-year old.
“Huh..” I may have given my first grudge of disapproval that would become a defining charectestics of a complex, lonely personality.
“You have to see these.” He ordered cool-ly.
“This pack looks different. Mostly it has a burned jaw on the pack. You know, from all the fire and smoke?”
“How do you know?” He probed, skeptically.
“We can find some lying around. Let me look.”
It was very common, in that part to see cigarette packs at a few steps away from paan thellas (yes, the ones that played this on repeat). Things have changed for the better on the trashing front, the songs have not.
“I have seen those. Those are not burns. That is cancer.”
“What is cancer?”
We would later learn the answer of that question very intimately as we would see our grandmother get and recover from a different form of cancer.
“It is sickness. Cigarettes will give you that disease.”
“Then why do you want to be sick?”
“These wont.” He assured assertively.
“Here I found one!”
“That is not it. That is a matchbox wrapper.”
“No! Matchboxes are small. I collect these wrappers.” Years later we would collect stamps, coins, tazos(which he stole!), ideas and stocks together.
“They come in different sizes.” He said assertively. He was always full of wisdom. At that point he had seen 33% more of life. I called him dada. To put things into perspective, dada is a prestigious title reserved exclusively for the elder brother in some states in India. For example, former Indian cricket team captain. Cricket it the equivalent of football in India and the team’s captain commands a Godlike status.
“Oh, okay. Do you want me to run and get some SHIP matches? For the cigarettes?”
“We won’t need those for these.” He pulled one out smoothly, turned his chin up and held one between his lips. He looked like what movie stars would look like in my later years. Thankfully, it was much later, I would get any screen-time. For those years, I got all my learning from this hero. He was my only influencer, other than my parents.
He split another cigarette into half like one would split a pencil and handed it to me.
“Thank you! Why do I get only half?”
“Because you are small.”
The argument was sound. I was skinny. He was fat and probably weighed twice my size. He got a fair share of the tall people genes, my aunt would remind me quarterly.
I picked up a twig to probe random things that we found as I followed him down to particularly nowhere.
“Where did you get the money?”
“We won a cricket match. I brought the team a big Thunder bottle.”
“What is Thunder?”
“Have you seen the dark blue bottle?”
“Yes. We might find one lying around. Is it that one?” I pointed with my twig.
He inspected with a chubby frown and nodded no.
“What does it taste like?”
“Thunder!”
“Scary! You are very brave.”
“Why haven’t you tried the cigarette?”
“I will have to ask mom.” I replied embarrassed and he smirked.
“Don’t tell her I gave it.”
We walked a little further. I was probing random objects around.
“What is this?” I asked him poking at an object.
He took the twig from me poked it firmly and raised it to lift it in the air.
It was white, but had brown stains on it. It was like the dad’s-torn-cotton~banyan-mop but the cotton seemed of superior quality.
“It is a pee-napkin.”
“What is a pee napkin? I have never used it.”
“Only women use it.”
“Why?’
He turned around to see if anyone was looking. Not a soul in the vicinity. Then he faced away from me and took a leak in broad daylight. Told you, he was cool.
“You see. Girls can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Because they are scared.”
I could not go back home ask my little sister and validate that. She was 2. She did not know what fear was. Still doesn’t.
“Why is it dark brown then?’
He pulled up his pant. Turned around bent over, looked me dead in the eye and said,
“That is what it looks like when it dries up.”
That was the end of my line of questioning
“Besides, you can see toilets for gents. Have you seen a ladies toilet?”
He was right. It was 90s. D&I or reservation wave had not hit Indian public policy yet and the first Indian female prime minister had been assassinated decades ago. Most western leaders assassinated until then were mostly white males.
He then pulled out another joint and popped a BOOMER, handed me the wrapper that had a water-based tattoo and we walked off into the sunset.
The barren road where we walked now has Kalyan Bhel of Bibwedi-Kondwa road where we meet when I go back. I had this white dude and his date try paan somewhere close by when he visited.
This cousin went on to be a pilot. Hopefully still likes the PHANTOMs, BOOMERS and has a lovely daughter that asks a lot of questions. In a way, I too, prepped him for life.
I thought of him as I was having chaat and saw a paan thella near me. What is your earliest childhood memory? Were your cousins this cool?
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