Small towns have better stories than cities. I come from a small town. A quintessential, nondescript place called Morigaon, where trends reach late because the highways do not pass through it. Before I was the “hi-fi” American student, I was the “Morigoya” girl for the first sixteen years of my life. I am still the “Morigoya” girl, albeit my “Morigaon-ness” is limited to reminiscing about it from different places. But I go home. Quite a lot. I love Morigaon, the nondescriptness of it, its being-there-while-not-being-thereness, the feeling of not knowing what to answer when someone asks where in Assam are you from. Really, nobody knows a lot about my town. And I am glad they don’t—I get to play the “exotic” rural Assamese girl for the city-bred savarna Guwahati-boys.
I started smoking in 2018. Couldn’t tell you exactly when, but I remember a friend in my pg leaving a few cigarettes out on my table, forgetting about it, and me and my roommate trying them out on our balcony. It felt cool the first time doing it, so I continued. My roommate did not crave the coolness factor as much, so she didn’t. Life has been cool ever since. The problem, however, occurs when I go home. At home, I am not the independent woman living away, I am instead the daughter of two people who are known to the community, like every other person in a small town. “Everybody knows everybody knows everything about everybody” as Erin Quinn says in Derry Girls. Here, my “free-will” has no value, but my lineage does.
I didn’t realize how much people recognised me until I heard from people around that I had been buying cigarettes from the store. Took me a moment to process that information. I was at home, legs propped over my table browsing Instagram, as one does. A ping, text from my best friend. “Oi, people have been talking about you buying cigarettes, be careful”. I did not know how to respond to that. Okay, so people saw me. Realization dawned a few seconds later, when my ears grew hot, and I knew that the news might have already reached my parents. Just last night, my dad was talking about people buying “drug cigarettes"(what even?) from this particular place I frequented. Anyway, I couldn’t think straight for a while. What will my parents do? What will people say? The two biggest concerns for a small-town girl. A while later, I saw a Whatsapp story-post from my uncle, which read, “A talent is lost, but I am helpless” in his broken attempt at being poetic in Assamese. I took a screenshot, sent it to my best friend. “Lol is this about me?” Yes it was. Very much so.
I also didn’t realize buying cigarettes was that big of a deal. Actually, I did. I was just never at the receiving end of this criticism. My friends had probably faced it way back, in High School, when the boys started abusing substances. It didn’t occur to me, coming back freshly graduated from the glitzy, hedonistic Delhi spaces, that buying a pack in public would come with consequences. I had been far too removed from this place, physically, psychologically. So I didn’t really think too much about walking to the nearby pan-store in town (the infamous Chakra pan dukaan), asking for a packet of Marlboro Fuse Beyond, and going on my merry way. I did not notice the tens of pairs of eyes in the pan-store itself, and the innumerous pairs while I walked back. Should’ve taken a hint, there.
Anyway, now that the news had travelled, there was only one course of action: go farther away towards the peripheries of the town where you’d not be recognised as much. Smoke in secluded spaces. No smell anywhere near the house. But before these affirmative actions, I had to face the community. In small towns like ours, the community is just the extended family with some additions. I thought it would be easy to deny, beg for forgiveness, confront, respond. Turns out, not so much. By the time news reached me, it had travelled through space and time and probably the two nearby towns. What could I do? I called my mother up, crying. “These people are talking shit about me, ma”. She investigated further, called up my uncle, and it turns out there have been meetings in the extended family about me being a drug-addict! Where did THAT even come from? Apparently, a lot of people had very strong opinions on me smoking.
I denied it with everything I had. NO, I said, I didn’t buy any cigarettes from nowhere. Mum, believed me (or did she?), until the very next week I was caught smoking inside my room (what was I even thinking?). And just like that, my fate and my reputation were sealed. I had become the resident addict in the community (an honor I took on from my dad). I stopped talking to people I earlier considered family. Visits to the village stopped. People saw “cracks in the foundation” in my household, and used that to pit us against each other. A lot of things took a lot of drastic turns, something I never imagined would result from a cigarette?
Years have passed after this discovery, news in the town has died down. Other pieces of news have taken over the collective consciousness: a restaurant owner fucked his pet dog, a teacher fucked a high-school senior, a married woman fucked her driver. Small towns are obsessed with people fucking. I wonder why. Every ‘affair’ (legitimate or not) makes headlines. Nobody escapes. Crossing sexual boundaries is the ultimate sin, smoking doesn’t even come close. Who’s discreetly entering this woman’s house in the dark? Where's this woman traveling at night? Did you hear? That man has a wife at home, but keeps another woman on the side. Me smoking? Old news.
I still wouldn't risk awakening the gossip-demon, so I stay careful nowadays. My designated smoke-shop is at the outskirts of the town. I take the car, park it a bit far so people do not recognise the car itself, walk as fast as I can to the store, make eye-contact with the dada sitting there. No words exchanged. He slides me the packet, I scan and pay. Until next time, our eyes signal (how romantic!). Conceal and carry—pockets, purses, black plastic bags. Run back to the car. More often than not, if I am with male company, I will ask them to go get me a pack. I smoke in my car, or my balcony, or my terrace when it’s dark. Can’t let people see me anywhere near cigarettes. Sometimes while walking back to the car, I feel like a criminal. I wonder what other price I would have to pay for my other transgressions, if they ever come to light.
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