Around the same period of meat-eating days,
Young Mohandas together with a relative,
Was enamoured by the smell of cigarettes!
They enjoyed watching clouds of smoke
That emitted from an uncle's mouth
The boys wanted to copy the uncle.
Specially, the way he smoked English cigarettes!
But the boys had no money to buy cigarettes.
They began collecting stumps of cigarettes
That were thrown around by the uncle.
When there was a dearth of stumps
They would begin to steal coins
That too from the poor domestic's
Meagre pocket money,
Just to buy Indian cigarettes!
When this method became tiresome,
They resorted to porous plants,
And began smoking with them.
However, this too became cumbersome!
At last in sheer frustration,
The two boys even decided to commit suicide.
They had heard of the poisonous dhatura seeds
An effective poison!
They went into a jungle and obtained dhatura seeds
They had hardly consumed one or two seeds
When alas! Courage failed them.
They realised that it was not easy to commit suicide
Perhaps, they understood the blunder they were committing
And took a firm decision to dismiss the suicide plan altogether.
Thanks to their intelligence and the reasoning power
They decided to bid good bye to smoking forever.
Gandhiji wrote:
"Ever since I have grown up,
I have never desired to smoke and have always regarded
The habit of smoking as barbarous, dirty and harmful!
I have never understood why there is such a desire
For smoking throughout the world!
I cannot bear to travel in a compartment,
Full of people, smoking! I become choked! "
Teenage years,
Are most challenging years of life!
With loads to study,
With many restrictions at home,
With hardly any freedom,
With many dreams ahead,
With new responsibilities and
To make the right decisions in life!
He is father of our nation. I love his personality and the his life style. You have unfolded the beauty of character of this great man for readers all across the world to read. A noble deed, an outstanding composition!
A nice poem, describing how much Mahatma Gandhi was firm in his determination. wish he could have survived another decade. History would have been different.
Yes, Akhtar Sahab, i too wish that he lived longer. History could have been re-written. So nice of you to read this poem Sir.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Inadvertent typos: please read as: and.his life style. I take this precious poem to my favorite.