How can you blame tobacco alone for cancer? Our elders smoked and chewed tobacco all their lives -- how come they never got it? I say it's the adulterated food we eat that has made our systems too weak to withstand nasha!" said Tarun Jindal, proprietor of a tobacco shop in Mehrauli.
He was bemoaning the slow death of his trade because of increased health awareness, and telling me that in Mehrauli's bustling local market ten years ago, there were ten tobacco shops like his -- today there are just three, all barely managing to survive.
"Ten years ago, when there was greater demand for it, hookah tobacco commanded a price of Rs 500 per kg, profits have gone up in smoke as the same sells at half that price," he said, adding, "the new generation has gutka and cigarettes -- the tradition of smoking the hookah is dying out with the older generation!"
Twenty-eight-year-old Tarun's family has been in the tobacco trade for six generations, long before the weed was declared public health enemy number one.
Their shop in Mehrauli's bustling market, was made in 1962, and it's quaint display of odiferous varieties of chewing tobacco and the darker, richer hookah versions, all kept in old-fashioned blue wooden boxes probably hasn't changed since.
The shop has its share of regulars, mostly local. The wealthy usually bypass his shop, except, as Tarun says, when they have to entertain elders who like to smoke the hookah. I fingered a dark, pungent concoction, and was told it was hookah tobacco, mixed with molasses for a special sweet aroma.
"Would you like some? We have a light one specially favoured by ladies!" said Tarun. He showed me how the hookah was used, inhaling deeply as it gurgled peacefully.
"Hookah smoking was a royal pastime, and Delhi's hakims actually recommended it as the best cure for acidity and flatulence," he said. Tarun and his brother claimed that hookah smoking was nowhere near as harmful as smoking cigarettes.
"In the hookah, the tobacco smoke passes through water which filters out tar and a lot of the nicotine. With these toxins out, the smoker inhales only clean smoke," he said.
The health issue was obviously a sore point with him, for he reverted to it time and again. "I also have it on authority that after chewing tobacco, if you rinse your mouth, you won't get oral cancer. Actually, all you need to do is take a few precautions, and then you can enjoy tobacco without any fear of cancer," said he.
I asked him if he was a tobacco user. He laughed and said, "Of course! I've grown up on sacks of the stuff! But not in front of my mother. I chew it, smoke it, and even use the hookah once in a while. After all, a halwai, sweetmaker, can't sell his sweets without tasting them!"
To tempt people into smoking hookahs, Tarun and others in the tobacco trade have brought out flavoured tobaccos, which contain only 0.05 per cent nicotine. However, he doesn't think this trend is going to be very long-lived.
"But then, this trade generally doesn't have much of a future anymore," says he regretfully. He and his brothers actually want to shift focus from tobacco retailing now, trying to get foreign buyers interested in traditional hookahs of different types.
"Anyway, I'm sure our children (whenever they come -- I'm not married yet!) won't want to sell tobacco. By then there'd probably be fewer takers than even today!" Amen to that, I said, silently of course, as I made my way out past his odiferous wares.Powered by 
