Cinema's power to move and mould men is awesome. Actors play facilitators and propagators of this power, and when India's Federal Health Minister, Anbumani Ramadoss, carried out a long campaign some months ago to ban smoking on the screen and even succeeded in doing so, he certainly had a point. Film heroes and heroines who essayed smokers often set hard-to-resist examples for especially their younger fans. The act was what mattered, not its consequences. Neither the money spent on cigarettes nor the terribly ruinous effect they had on health appeared on the radar of all those who idolised the men and women puffing away on the screen.
