By Persis R Singh

He smoked four packets of cigarettes a day. Sometimes her father would light one cigarette off the other. And then one day, he stopped. Just Like That. Her mother pleaded and cajoled and coerced, and he stopped. She was tired of breathing the smoke, in bed especially with  the mosquito net’s cave of suspended smoke. Her father’s skin began to glow, the whites of his eyes became white again. He never looked better. He said he never felt better. And then one day he picked up a packet of Benson and Hedges and started smoking again. Just Like That.

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Persis R Singh is a pseudonymous Fiji-born writer. ‘No Crying Aloud,’ her first book of poems, was snapped up by a university press a decade ago. Fearful of family backlash, the author decided against publishing at that time.