Smoke signals

Smoke signals from the south augur well for the state of the union. Not to mention the great Indian bazaar. The signals have come in the form of six boxes of cigars made by the Trichy-based company of Fenn Thompson.
Fenn Thompson came into my life some years ago when, at the suggestion of my then colleague Siddharth, I stopped smoking cigarettes and took to cigars instead.Siddharth offered me a Cuban Habanos in a generous rite of initiation.
A high-flying journalist himself, forever jetting off on foreign junkets which enable him regular access to duty-free shops, Siddharth has an even higher-flying elder brother who lives in New York and is an editor of the Wall Street Journal, no less. So maintaining a supply chain of imported cigars is not a problem for Siddharth. Since far from being a high-flier, I''ve a profile so low as to be below detection by most radar screens, keeping myself stocked with Cuba''s finest would certainly be a problem. Not to worry; you can get some pretty decent Indian cigars, said Siddharth.
He directed me to Gopal''s Zaffran Patti in New Delhi''s Khan Market where, for the price of Rs 150, inclusive of all local taxes, I acquired a box of 25 Black Tigers. OK, so they weren''t Cubans. But where was Rs 500-plus — the average price of a Habanos in Delhi — compared with six smackers for a Black Tiger? So far as my money went, and it doesn''t go far, it was no contest in favour of the Tigers.
Then suddenly one day, like their zoological counterparts in Sariska, the Tigers disappeared. Where have all the cigars gone? I asked Gopal Zaffran Patti, who shrugged a north Indian shrug which seemed to say: You know what these southerners are like; one day agitating against Hindi, the next day stopping cigar supplies. Who can tell with them? But I wasn''t buying Gopal Zaffran Patti''s cynicism. I''d had many dealings with ''these southerners'' as Gopal Zaffran Patti would have it, all of which had convinced me that they were by and large a sight better to do any sort of business with than their northern compatriots.
So I got the Trichy phone number of Fenn Thompson from an empty box of Black Tigers and asked a Tamil-speaking colleague, Narayani, to call them up. In a judicious mix of English and Tamil, Narayani explained my cigar-less plight to Fenn (or maybe it was Thompson). Would Fenn (or Thompson, as the case may be) tell Narayani how much money I should send, and in what form (cheque, DD, money order, etc) to Tiruchirapalli for Fenn (or Thompson, or both) to send me six boxes of cigars in Gurgaon, Haryana, where I live? Gurgaon? Haryana? said Fenn (Thompson?), as though reciting the names of some exoplanets one has vaguely heard of. Gurgaon, huh? OK, he (they?) said, and hung up on Narayani.
What did they say about payment? I asked. Nothing; they just said OK, and noted your address, said Narayani. They''re so daft as to send off goods without payment? No way; they must have just said that so some lunatic living in Haryana would stop bugging them by proxy, I said. But I was wrong. For five days later, the self-professed Haryanvi loony had six boxes of cigars delivered to him by the postman, courtesy Fenn Thompson. No sign of a bill, which presumably will turn up later.
As I contentedly puff a regenerated Black Tiger I think of Fenn Thompson, and of the so-called and totally illusory north-south divide, and of mutual trust and confidence, which are different words for trade and commerce, which in turn are synonyms for the give-and-take of democracy. And I blow a smoke ring in salute to all the unsung millions in this vast land that keep the show going, the flag flying. For the cigars, and everything else that goes with them, many thanks, fellas. In Tamil, of course.