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Savouring smoke
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Cigars journeyed to Europe from Cuba, and have now made their way to Bangalore. You were talking of colonial hangover, were you?
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Godfrey Phillips plans to introduce cigars into the social scene of Bangalore through promo nights
WINSTON CHURCHILL was famously inextricable from his Cuban cigars. As Britain's Prime Minister during the Second World War, he was to take his first high altitude flight in an un-pressurised cabin. But fly without his trademark cigar? Churchill couldn't dream of it. He apparently asked for a special oxygen mask to be made so he could use it while he was airborne, and the next day fully enjoyed his cigar, puffing it away at an altitude of 15,000 feet through a hole in his mask.
The cigar, a symbol of decadent capitalism and power since Columbus' crew reportedly discovered it when they stumbled on Cuba in 1492, and brought it back to Europe, has now found its way to Bangalore. Cigarette company Godfrey Phillips, who have imported cigars from Altadis, USA to other metros such as Delhi and Mumbai, are now bringing a wide range of cigars to Bangalore.
The cigars are not from Spain, if you were thinking of Bizet's opera of Carmen (the Spanish cigar factory worker). They're not even from Cuba, that bastion of cigar production — but instead from the neighbouring Dominican Republic. This perhaps explains the frequent reassurances in Godfrey Phillips' introductory brochure — that it was Dominican emigrants to Cuba who took the seeds and secrets of tobacco cultivation with them, and a reminder that the highest rating for a cigar by magazine Cigar Aficionado was to a Dominican, and not Cuban cigar.
Since cigars will be relatively new entrants to Bangalore's social scene, Godfrey Phillips plans to introduce them through promo nights; combining cigar tasting sessions with alcohol (whisky or Scotch, presumably) tasting, and popularising the idea of languorous smokes to unwind at home.
The correct way to savour a cigar will also be conveyed — no quick coffee break smoke, this. Cigars are meant to have their ends clipped (but ever so slightly, you wouldn't want to knock more than you can help off a Rs. 300 cigar!) just enough to reveal the tobacco. It is then lit, not with a petrol lighter which would spoil the taste, but with a gas lighter or a matchbox so that the end is charred for an even burn. More expensive cigars are lit through burning cedar wood, because match boxes can introduce an element of phosphorous. Then, the smoke is drawn into the mouth — no need to inhale — and allowed to slowly circulate, like wine. The ash is not tapped off, but instead allowed to collect on the cigar, till it starts to crack up (a clue to why Churchill's suits needed constant mending and his wife made him a special bib for bedtime smokes so his silk pyjamas wouldn't go up in flames). If you don't have the time to linger over and relish your cigar, it can be put away and relit when you have more time.
Shakeel Savanur, the Sales Manager for Godfrey Phillips, explains that the company is targeting a wide range of customers, each of whom can find "their" cigar from the range now available. Company representatives recommend beginners try the Don Diego Prelude: these handmade cigars make for a smooth smoke and cost Rs. 100 each. There are the more premium hand-made cigars encased in handsome humidors, such as the Santa Damiana, but these can cost up to Rs. 550 each and are best savoured by the regular smoker.
Flavours like cognac and strawberry are intended to draw in the women as well — conjuring up images of Demi Moore and Madonna, just some of the women who've been seen sporting a cigar. But another, slightly more ominous, image inseparable from the leather armchair-scotch sipping world of the cigar smoker is that of psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. The line, "Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar" isn't his only connection with the smoke; he also died of oral cancer after a lifetime of smoking nearly 20 cigars a day.
HEMANGINI GUPTA
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