Read between my lipssss

By Arun Ram


I find cigarettes weird creatures. Drunken stupour I am not in, when I
say this. If a peg of rum can slap its aficionado, I would, by now,
have got slapped nine times—without ice.

So, cigarettes as weird creatures, ahem!

Let me ask you this one thing: are you a smoker?

Not that I ask questions to get answers. I just ask.

I ask. I think. I think you think. I smoke.

When I open a pack of Wills, ten people stare at me (I buy a
ten-a-pack pack). Have you – by now, the non-smoker must have stubbed
himself/ herself off this wonderful flame – looked at the filter tip
before you jabbed it between your lips? I did.

White, as science tries to say, is light. So is our filter tip –
before tar makes the soothing penetration from Drag One (DO). In the
whiteness of that white, I see faces—pleading, pagan and purgatorial.
The filter tip of my Wills tells me the feeling deep down – to the
bottom of the packet, where the valiant end of the cigarette
contemplates the inevitability of the instant inflammation. The tip,
dear DOer, has a wonderful life—it starts with the moment you light up
and ends with, well, just that. If the tip could speak in its enviable
hybernation, we will have another topic to discuss here.

Time to get personal. With the cigarette, that is. I see cigarettes –
however tightly they are packed – shuffling themselves as soon as I
open the pack. Are they panicking (who will go up in flames first)?
Conspiring (You get him/ her first)? Copulating (We can't do it here,
let our spirits do it in the areole of his left lung)? I usually let
them choose between themselves. I, you know, love martyrs—preferably
alive. So here pops the guy (I have not found a gal there, yet) with
the guts. Up!

Then, the white speaks— almost like how the light spoke to the
prophets. I realise the face of the cigarette is the filter. (If you
smoke a cigarette without a filter and see a face on the lateral side
of the cylindrical wonder, we will talk in private). One guy has
really got a face: with a few flakes from the adjacent one, forming
what we humans take for eyes, nose and, yes, a pair of smoking lips.

It was a challenge, dear smoker, I could not refuse to accept. And, as
I lit up, I could not take my eyes of the rest. One tried to form a
union of nine (he included, as the secretary general of the
till-matchsticks-do-us-part). Another was a revisionist, preaching the
efficacy of nicotine patches.

In every pack of ten (they are conspicuously missing in the twenties
pack) there is a revisionist. I listen to him. I want to quit. I will.
But, only when I find a lady in the pack. After all, behind every
ex-smoker, there is a butt.

Post Script: MS Word tells me I have written 505 words. There is this
temptation to make it 555 to pay glowing tributes to that cigarette
brand. As I type out this PS, I salute Oscar Wilde; not only for
having said he could resist everything but temptation, but also to
have proclaimed that his next cigarette would be his last.

Hand of God

The Argentine captain described the goal afterwards to reporters as :un poco con la cabeza de Maradona y otro poco con la mano de Dios; (a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God).

WC stratagies

BADEN BADEN, Germany, June 9 (Reuters) England are using a ploy in
training that would make every goalkeeper's World Cup penalty dream
come true.
Beating a top-class keeper can be hard enough but England have
given the ultimate soccer duel an extra twist by telling Paul
Robinson where they will place the spot kick.
The unlikely tactic is rooted in England's traumatic experience
at past tournaments, where shootout misses have bounced them out of
World Cups in 1990 and 1998, along with Euro 96 and Euro 2004 in
Portugal.
As he prepared for tomorrow's Group B opener against Paraguay,
Robinson told reporters: ''The lads get used to taking penalties
against you -- and you generally tend to know which way they like
going.
''So at some stages we say to them 'Tell us which way you're
going to go, we won't dive until you've kicked it'.
''It makes it harder for them to score -- they really have to
put it in the corners.''
Robinson, who saved a penalty for Tottenham Hotspur in last
season's final Premier League game at West Ham United, is fully
expecting to face penalties at the finals.
Coach Sven-Goran Eriksson believes that if England go far at the
World Cup, they will at some point face a shootout -- and they
clearly need to improve their spot kicks.
Frank Lampard has replaced David Beckham as penalty taker after
the captain missed against Turkey in England's final Euro 2004
qualifier, France in their opening group game in Portugal and in the
shootout against the hosts in the quarter-finals.
PRESSURE MOMENT
''You can practice penalties till the cows come home but it is
different when you are out there in front of 60,000 people and the
pressure is on,'' Beckham said at their Buhlertal training ground.
''We will carry on practising but when it comes to a shootout, it
is a different situation.
''As good as you can be at penalties, there is a chance the
keeper can read you as much as you can strike it well.
''I don't mind taking penalties and I'm always quite confident at
taking them. But Frank is the penalty-taker for Chelsea and that's
why he is taking them for England.''
Worryingly for Eriksson, Lampard had a penalty saved in last
week's 3-1 friendly win over Hungary at Old Trafford.
Worse still, striker Peter Crouch fared no better four days later
when he ballooned a late spot kick in their 6-0 rout of Jamaica.
England can, of course, live with missing them in warm-ups. It is
a world away from the sickening feeling that occurs when failure
from the spot sends a team packing at a tournament.
Recalling their exit in Portugal, Lampard told reporters in Baden
Baden: ''It was horrible to go out on penalties.
''It was horrible on the pitch at the end. It was horrible with
the families that evening and it was horrible the next day when you
packed your bags to go home.''
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GELSENKIRCHEN, June 9 (Reuters) Ecuador coach Luis Fernando Suarez
had no qualms about imposing a World Cup sex ban on his players.
The only problem is that it applies to him as well.
''Oh that's good,'' said one female journalist, impressed at
his solidarity with his team.
''No. No, it is not good,'' smirked Suarez, during a news
conference. ''It is not good at all.''
Ecuador play their Group A World Cup opener against Poland today
and later face hosts Germany and Costa Rica.
REUTERS DH BST1547

CARLOS ALBERTO PERIERRA, BRAZIL

The magic rectangles system that we play only works if the team play as a unit helping each other. If Emerson and Ze Roberto are left exposed in midfield we are not going to win games. We have to play without the ball as well as with the ball."