Signal brand cigarettes.
That’s the brand of cigarettes my grandmother smoked. Not the grandmother in Melaka, the other on that stayed with us at home and took care of me.
No one else I knew smoked this brand of cigarettes, not then, not now. She smoked it when she stayed in Batu Gajah, and when she stayed with us, my mom bought it for her from the sundry shop near my house. I’m not sure if its a coincidence, or if my mom requested for the sundry shop to stock the brand, but i’ve never seen any other shop sell this particular brand.
It came in a simple pale orange box, with a picture of a white railway signal on the cover.
My grandmother smoked a pack a day, was thin as a reed, was completely deaf, swore like a Cantonese sailor, but lived to almost 80.
Anyway, the cigarette company is still around, its still being sold in the US, albeit from the website I can see they’ve changed to a modern box design.