The Hindu Business Line : Smoke raised with the fume of sighs

A for Anbu, B for ban, C for cigarette, and you already know the story about the recent notification from the Ministry of Health. From August 1, movies and TVs should not show tobacco products, and the actors must abstain from these taboo things. To save old scenes from going up in smoke, the Government is generous enough to allow their screening as long as a health warning scrolls on. Now, a few questions:

Matches?

You can't be asking for matches when cigarettes and beedis are off. Perhaps, you want to know if India is the first country to impose a draconian ban such as this. "India becomes first country to ban smoking on screen," states a headline of the Islamic Republic News Agency (www.irna.ir). However, Randeep Ramesh writes in The Guardian that Thailand banned smoking scenes in films in 2000. So, there you have a match!

Filter, please?

Exactly, that's what the sarkar wants to achieve through the new rule. Otherwise, the youth will imbibe the wrong lessons from film heroes, feels the Minister. The content-filterers will work frame-to-frame, cropping and masking brand names or logos of tobacco products, if these form part of any picture printed or aired through any form of electronic media.

Mild?

Not mild, but so strong that you can hear the coughs from Bollywood, even as the officials are gearing up to clear the smoky mess from reels. "Cut-cut," cry the directors, but the regulations are too real. For, `smoking' means smoking of tobacco in the form of cigarette, cigar, beedi or otherwise with the aid of a pipe, wrapper or any other instruments, as defined in the Cigarettes and other Tobacco Products Act.

U smoke? Cough...cough...

No, thanks, because if V smoke then the babus will come double-fast, even as we wheeze, to X the visuals and ask Y we did what we did on Zee.

Aren't there worse things on screen?

Oh, you mean the ghastly acts that villains engage in, and the funny dance numbers? Or, all the false promises that heroes give their dames? Plus, the violence of dialogue and vice-versa? I think other ministries are working on these areas.

Sweet smoke of rhetoric!

Ah, that's a line from Love's Labour's Lost. That way, Shakespeare packs a lot of smoke in his plays.

For instance, you can hear Romeo saying, "Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs," as the film-world is now doing. And in the tragedy Titus Andronicus, he writes, "Smoke, like incense, doth perfume the sky." That's for old times' sake, "with the smoke out at the chimney," as in As You Like it, whether you like or not.

Any better way to stop the menace?

Dave Barry has a suggestion that cigarette sales would drop to zero overnight if the warning said "CIGARETTES CONTAIN FAT." A tip for the Minister, that is.

I wish they carried a warning about politics...

Politics can be more damaging than smoke. But, it is so all-pervading that if there had to be a statutory caution — that politics can harm brain cells — we'd have the scrolling all through news bulletins.

SayCheek@TheHindu.co.in

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Smoke raised with the fume of sighs