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Anything But a Lighter: From 'Dhurandhar' to 'O'Romeo,' The Most Unhinged Ways to Light a Cigarette
From bombs and machine guns to burning teddy bears and flying sparks, cinema's favourite smokers have turned lighting a cigarette into an extreme sport
A burning teddy bear can be many things. A metaphor for lost innocence. A signifier of unprocessed trauma. Evidence that the props department had a lot of time on its hands. But that it can also double up as a lighter is something we recently learned from Shahid Kapoor, who sets one on fire and uses it to light a cigarette in Vishal Bhardwaj’s upcoming O Romeo.
Cigarette smoking has always been injurious to health. But lighting your cigarette with such swagger that it emotionally destroys everyone around you might be the more lethal move. There is a difference between nicotine damage and cinematic damage, and our films know this well.
Cinema has never been subtle about cigarettes. Sometimes they are psychological. Sometimes narrative. Sometimes metaphoric. And sometimes they are just there so a man can look “cool” or a woman can look “not like other girls”. We are deeply uninterested in all of that. We do not care what the cigarette means. We care about how it is lit. Because let’s face it, once a cigarette is on, the options are limited. You can hold it delicately. You can grip it like it owes you money. You can smoke cross like Meryl Streep or hollow out your cheeks like Tabu. That’s about it. The real creative freedom lies in the moment before ignition.
So, in the interest of a slow news week and faster-burning objects, here are some of our favourite moments when cinema decided that a lighter was simply too boring.
Dhurandhar — with a bomb
Across world cinema, cigarettes often mark thresholds. Between life and death. Resolve and hesitation. Intimacy and violence. In Dhurandhar, they also mark the moment a man decides to light up using a literal bomb. Hamza’s journey truly kicks off in the second part, and his zero-regard bravado is perfectly encapsulated when he uses a bomb to light his cigarette. It is objectively very funny to see the anti-smoking warning crawl across the screen while a man calmly holds an explosive device inches from his face. In that moment, the cigarette is the safest thing in the frame.
KGF: Chapter 2 — with a machine gun
Rocky Bhai empties round after round into a police station, because restraint is not part of the aesthetic. Eventually, the barrel of the machine gun turns red-hot, smoking in quiet exhaustion. And that, friends, is when Rocky Bhai decides it is time for a cigarette.
Anyone who has tried lighting a cigarette off a suspiciously warm metal surface in an airport smoking room knows this is usually not glamorous. But Rocky Bhai does it with such confidence that you almost forget he has just put more metal into that building than the props department put into the set.
Jawan — with sparks from his shoes
In Jawan, Shah Rukh Khan’s older, angrier, deeply zaddy-coded avatar Vikram Rathore is involved in a bike chase. He skids in slow motion. His shoes scrape the road. Sparks fly. Those sparks light his cigar.
Shah Rukh Khan has made us believe far more improbable things, including his double role in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. Compared to that, believing that friction sparks can light a cigar feels reasonable. If there is even a one-in-20,000 chance of this happening, it will happen to Shah Rukh Khan.
Pushpa 2 —with accidental shoulder fire
Pushpa has given us enough swagger moments to sustain Instagram reels till the end of time. In Pushpa 2, Allu Arjun adds another entry to the canon. A passerby carrying a lantern accidentally sets Pushpa’s shoulder on fire. Pushpa, seeing an opportunity rather than a medical emergency, uses the flames to light a cigar. Because why waste a perfectly good shoulder fire. Fire safety is temporary. Swag is forever.
O' Romeo — with a teddy bear
In the O' Romeo trailer, Shahid Kapoor’s Ustara lights a teddy bear on fire using a lighter, then uses the flaming teddy bear to light his cigarette. He then casually tosses the still-burning toy aside, causing a larger fire behind him, and walks away.
There are easier ways to do this. There always are. One is tempted to recall Padmaavat, where Ranveer Singh’s Khilji pours perfume on a woman and rubs against her to scent himself. Politics and cruelty aside, there were simpler options. Similarly here, the teddy did not deserve this. RIP.
Special Mention: Katrina Kaif in Chikni Chameli
Technically, Katrina Kaif uses a matchstick. But she lights that match off her own sizzling body, as the lyrics proudly announce, “husn ki teeli se”. The literal interpretation of that line, combined with the visual commitment, makes this less a lighting technique and more a philosophical position.