The smoking section

I travelled back to New York from Moscow in business class. It was divided into two sections: smoking and non-smoking. Who could have known in advance? Alas, my seat happened to be in the smoking section. Next to me was a free seat, and in the seat adjacent to the free seat a gentleman was smoking. The smoke was affecting me so much! I have such bad luck with regard to smokers. When I am near them, they face me so that all the smoke goes inside me. If only they would look the other way!

There was a very, very fat man sitting behind me. We liked each other from the beginning. We were conversing, and he was telling me about the weather in Moscow. He was also suffering from the smoke. Two or three times I heard him say the word ‘hell’. I knew that it applied to our smoker-companion.

Then the situation went from bad to worse. Two very stout men came and stood in the aisle right beside me. They lit their cigarettes, and also they were drinking alcohol. They were not even one foot away from me. It was too much! I was really getting pain in my chest. I did not know what to do.

While they were standing there, I spoke to the stewardess. I begged her, “Please, can you help me? These men are smoking."

The stewardess said, “What can I do? You are sitting in the smoking section."

They had come from the business class section behind me. They came all the way to my row to smoke because their section was non-smoking and mine was smoking. For two and a half hours the passenger near me and these two men in the aisle smoked without interruption. How painful it was! I felt as if I were the one smoking! It was such a terrible experience.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Sri Chinmoy in Russia, Agni Press, 2001
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/scr