“Smells, like music, hold memories,” Arunadhati Roy has written. Smells hold memories. That is why some things are the hardest to forget. My obsession with smells go way back to my childhood. Mind you, I am often accused by my mother that my nose malfunctions with regard to stinking odors. Of course, I do not agree.
I remember the two bath towels my Mom and I had years ago. Both were blue but different shades. You know how it is with towels. Brand new they look crisp and radiant. But as time passes, they discolor a little. There came a time that both the towels started looking almost the same. Sometimes even a keen eye would not be able to differentiate. But I never made a mistake. I would smell the two towels. My mother’s smelt of her. Trust me, I do not have dog-genes. But I knew it only by the fragrance of my mother. I could only get the fragrance of my mother’s while mine smelt nothing.
Then comes my set of aunts and uncles from France. They come once a year, the whole battalion, kids and gifts. They come with no warning. If by any chance, I was not home at the time of their arrival, I return and figure out that they have come. With just one breath. “Did uncle so and so come?” I ask my mother who looks around to see what trace is visible. There is no trace of the best French perfume to be seen. I only smell them.
Some people wear a special kind of perfume. Only one brand. Customized and chosen. I had one such teacher at school. It was one heavenly smell and she walks in with a cloud of scent. Having grown up and working as a teacher myself, she still loved me and smelled the same. One day, somebody came from behind and covered my eyes. It was someone else standing close by who asked me to guess the person. I could not see her. But it was the unmistakable smell. “It is Miss P……”, I shouted and I told the surprised duo, “She cannot hide her fragrance, can she?”
I went for a confession, as Catholics do. Before that Christmas, the parish had organized a whole morning with guest priests for confessions to be heard. I am usually very particular with the priest I go to. This day I made sure I went to someone I did not know. Kneeling down behind the screen I did not see his face. To date, that is the best confession I have done. The priest was extremely kind and understanding, a true mediator between God and I. But I never saw his face. I never knew his name. Pardon me, I only smelled his perfume or deodorant. There is no sin in awareness. That was his only identity. If you ask me who this priest was, I do not know the name. It would create an uproar if I were to say, “I only know how he smelled like.”
The next came in Delhi. In a steaming hot Dehi summer, the first showers of summer fell and I ran out of the hostel lawn, to where there was no grass. Rain drops fell and the hot dry earth smelled so beautiful. That smell of the first rain on dust is incredible. One of those things that cannot be explained but felt.
Then the smell of his hair gel. Seated next to my friend who was falling asleep in the bus, I could smell it so near. Those were the days hair-gel became the fashion. Every man-boy-child was caked in hair-gel. At seventeen years I did not know I was falling in love. Fifteen years later, again in the bus I smelled the same hair gel and I looked. I knew he is continents away and not even a ‘friend’ anymore. But the sad brain identifies the smell and connects only with him.
My biggest fear is having to leave people I love. I knew I would leave my favorite place on earth, with my favorite people and I was collecting memories. I wanted them to be as vivid and real as possible. Then you gifted me an expensive bottle of perfume, for my birthday. At home, when I started working, my salary was just twice the cost of that perfume. I inspected the scratched out price and figured. But the specialty was that it was the female version of the same perfume you used. To me, the fragrance was you. Eleven years later, the empty bottle, is still with me. It has a trace of that smell. The smell that is almost you.
It might be the flowers, the smell of new books, the dainty little erasers we had as kids. Even the stinking smell of urine in certain parts of the old city or the foul smelling river. They are instilled in your memory as a smell. It is easy to forget certain things. You can close your eyes to them, chase the feelings away. But with the smells, can you?
