Let me enjoy it while I can!

Rawalpindi: Smoking they say, is harmful for your health but try telling that to a confirmed smoker and he will rubbish your warning, especially if he has already attained a ripe old age in his span of life! In the fast changing world, the blacksmith in the picture gives a message that traditional habits and customs are still practiced by many people. He is busy with his work while having a drag on his ‘hookah’ or ‘water pipe’ or in slang, ‘hubble bubble’ – whatever you may like to call it! “Let me enjoy it while I can,” he said. “It gives me satisfaction and a lot of pleasure.”

The hookah is smoked in many parts of the world and is known by different names. Though it is now considered as something used only by villagers or less privileged persons, the use of hookahs in ancient times in the subcontinent was not only a custom but a matter of prestige. Rich and landed classes would smoke them and their use was not restricted to men only – women also used to indulge in this form of smoking and in villages they still do.

Although it was traditionally prevalent in the country for generations, hookah went out of fashion when it began to be considered ‘common’ in high society or urbanites in general but remained popular in rural areas. It became popular and fashionable again in cosmopolitan cities when ‘shisha’ was introduced, with aromatic flavours and many cafés in Pakistan offered hookah to their guests, while many households acquired hookahs for smoking or decoration purposes. In 2013, it was banned by the Pakistan Supreme court because cafe owners started offering ‘sheesha’ to minors.

Here are some facts about the ‘hookah.’ In the Indian city of Fatehpur Sikri, Roman Catholic missionaries arriving from the southern part of the country, introduced tobacco to the Mughal emperor Akbar and historians say that Akbar’s physician, Irfan Shaikh, then invented the hookah in India. However, a Persian poet refers to the use of the ‘galyan’, thus dating its use at least as early as the time of the Shah Tahmasp I. There is, however, no evidence of the existence of the water pipe until the 1560s. Moreover, tobacco is believed to have arrived in India in the 17th century, so that suggests another substance was probably smoked, perhaps through some other method.

Following the European introduction of tobacco to Persia and India, Hakim Abu’l-Fath Gilani, who came from Persia, later became a physician in the Mughal court and raised health concerns after smoking tobacco became popular among Indian noblemen. He subsequently envisaged a system that allowed smoke to be passed through water in order to be 'purified'. Gilani introduced the ‘galyan’, or ‘hookah,’ after Asad Beg, the ambassador of Bijapur, encouraged Akbar I to take up smoking.