The Blowhard
04-08-2002, 03:11 AM
Woman happy with daily diet of cigarette stubs
A woman in southern India claims she survives on a daily diet of cigarette stubs.
Sixty-one-year-old Khayarunnisa collects and eats stubs of beedi - a cigarette indigenous to India in which tobacco is rolled into a leaf and tied with a cotton thread.
She says she started 50 years ago and can't imagine life without them now.
She is up early every morning collecting beedi leftovers from the streets before they are swept clean.
Her doctor says he has given up hope of persuading her to stop, despite her repeatedly suffering stomach pains.
Khayarunnisa, from Kotamedu in Tamil Nadu state, told the Sandhya Varta newspaper: "My father was a heavy smoker and I ate whatever was left of the beedis he threw away.
"I lost my appetite for normal food long ago. Other people have to bother about cooking food. I don't have such problems since beedi remains are available everywhere and for free. I cannot imagine life without them."
Pattabhiraman, a local shopkeeper, said: "She keeps a large stock beedi stubs so that she wont have to go looking for them every day. Sometimes when she fails to turn up I begin to wonder if she isn't dead with all that rot inside her body."
Dr M Kanakasabapathy asked Khayarunnisa to give up the habit after she recently began complained of recurring stomach pains.
He said: "As a doctor I should be the one doing the counselling but I am forced to listen to arguments in defence of an abnormal diet. She says she can sleep well only if she has had a beedi meal. I have given up trying to reform her."
Story filed: 12:29 Sunday 7th April 2002
<img src=http://home.ix.netcom.com/~camman/_uimages/Heckler.gif>
"Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else."
A woman in southern India claims she survives on a daily diet of cigarette stubs.
Sixty-one-year-old Khayarunnisa collects and eats stubs of beedi - a cigarette indigenous to India in which tobacco is rolled into a leaf and tied with a cotton thread.
She says she started 50 years ago and can't imagine life without them now.
She is up early every morning collecting beedi leftovers from the streets before they are swept clean.
Her doctor says he has given up hope of persuading her to stop, despite her repeatedly suffering stomach pains.
Khayarunnisa, from Kotamedu in Tamil Nadu state, told the Sandhya Varta newspaper: "My father was a heavy smoker and I ate whatever was left of the beedis he threw away.
"I lost my appetite for normal food long ago. Other people have to bother about cooking food. I don't have such problems since beedi remains are available everywhere and for free. I cannot imagine life without them."
Pattabhiraman, a local shopkeeper, said: "She keeps a large stock beedi stubs so that she wont have to go looking for them every day. Sometimes when she fails to turn up I begin to wonder if she isn't dead with all that rot inside her body."
Dr M Kanakasabapathy asked Khayarunnisa to give up the habit after she recently began complained of recurring stomach pains.
He said: "As a doctor I should be the one doing the counselling but I am forced to listen to arguments in defence of an abnormal diet. She says she can sleep well only if she has had a beedi meal. I have given up trying to reform her."
Story filed: 12:29 Sunday 7th April 2002
<img src=http://home.ix.netcom.com/~camman/_uimages/Heckler.gif>
"Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else."