Charminar is one of the oldest and strongest cigarettes available in the market(I am not sure now). I used to smoke this cigarette by the pack, when I was in Bombay in 1997. It has a great flavour and great body to the smoke. If you ask an old timer, he would be surprised that some of the young folks too smokes this, because nowadays people go for milds, lights, ultra lights and maybe smokeless ones.
It is a great cigarette to fill grass and get stoned, when we were in college and trip on Rock music. Charminar, Scissors and Gold Flake Plain had a real macho factor to them. The way guys unwrap the packet and fix the clear film along with the inner pack and enclose them with the outer pack, so that the loose tobacco flakes never falls into the trouser packets to the way they tap the cigarette end on the packet to make it firm on one end to lighting it had class and a solemn ritual was performed before you had a smoke. Now you hardly find any filter less cigarettes available in the market. The French compare Charminar cigarettes to the Gitanes, they are used to in France.
Now it is sad that the government have banned smoking in public places, which they haven’t clearly demarcated and you get fined for smoking behind a toilet in a bus station where hardly there is a soul to induce passive smoking. Those were the days when you could smoke in a chai shop and enjoy your cuppa, discussing Marxism and talking about one day, one day. this earth would be an utopia and we would give a damn to all the snotty nosed girls who wrinkle their noses when they cross a guy smoking.
Yeah, missing Charminar and the Charm it had.