Mantu's unfortunate smoking experience

In our family, my father used to smoke quite often. He liked real cigarettes plus our Indian hookah. My mother also used to smoke the Indian hookah on those days when my father was away at the bank. Then, when my father used to come home on weekends, she was a saint; she never smoked. She was afraid of my father, so she never smoked on Saturday or Sunday. She did not want him to know that she smoked, but he knew.

When my uncle was alive, so many times he begged my father to give up smoking for the sake of his health. My father did not listen to his repeated requests. But on the day my uncle died, my father said, "What kind of love do I have for him if I cannot give up smoking?" On that day he gave up smoking for good. He never touched cigarettes or Indian hookahs again.

Among my brothers and sisters, nobody was interested in smoking. One of our servants instigated Mantu to smoke. Mantu was outside, sitting on a swing. After inhaling the cigarette smoke for a few seconds, my poor brother's head began rotating. He fell down from the swing and got hurt. His right eye was badly damaged.

When my eldest sister, Arpita, discovered that Mantu had been smoking and that he had fallen down and hurt himself, she commanded him to come inside the house. She took him into one of the rooms and bolted the door from inside. Then she started beating him black and blue. Mantu was crying and crying. In comparison to Mantu's height, she was like a dwarf! He was much stronger than Arpita, but out of respect for his eldest sister he did not fight back. He had to accept her beating. Then he took an oath that he would never smoke again. That was his first and last time smoking.

Luckily, I never wanted to smoke. When I saw my brother's fate at the hands of my sister, I said, "Who wants to be beaten?" This is how I got the smoking lesson in my life.

From:Sri Chinmoy,My brother Chitta, Agni Press, 1998
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/mbc