I am a very "nosy " person. I remember fragrances of different things, people, places, times. Many a times, while taking a walk down the memory lane, I am filled with haunting aromas of different things.
A little about how smells are etched in our memories -
"Dr Yaara Yeshurun, who led the study at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel said early smells had a 'privileged' status in our memories.
Scientists have long known that smells are one of the best ways to evoke the past.
I am told, as a child of 3 or 4 yrs, I loved to hang around with my Granddad, even when he sat with his clients for long boring meetings( he was a very well known lawyer), puffing one 'biri' after another ( he was a chain smoker at that time). I seemed to prefer to simply park myself on his lap, head on his chest, and spend hours and hours with him, than to play around like other children did of my age. My Grandma feared I was addicted to his 'biri' smoke. I think I liked the way he smelled...of unlimited biri and coffee. Later, he gave up smoking for good. Then he mostly smelled of coffee and medicines. I still liked to hang around him... inhaling his presence.
Then, I remember how the cemented railings of our balcony smelled after a quick and sudden shower of rain. I remember the strong cravings to lick it....
Summer evenings and nights in Ranchi, are particularly vivid in my olfactory memory......... every evening, we used to sprinkle water on the balcony to cool it down. I loved the heady smells of the dry earth lapping up water. Frangrances of the freshly watered plants, mangoes, the water cooler, drinking water stored in clay pots, fragrances of 'raat ki rani', glasses of rooh-afzah, hail storms, first rain showers.....
School....a packed school bus, the classrooms, the playgrounds, the trees after a shower of rain, the stage, chalk, esp during summers, the wooden tables and chairs, new books, ink, report cards, tiffin box, the open hall after our lunch break, the freshly cleaned toilets early in the morning,....I remember how these and many more such things smelled.
The first cake I baked, the peppermint toffee that I loved, Dairy milk chocolates, the cabinet where we stored all the homeopathic meds, the pooja almira that smelled of incense sticks, dad's office that smelled of files, the winter blankets, old trunks, ...and I can go on and on.....
The bamboo trees behind our house, the huge tamarind tree, mom's roses, the money plants, tulsi, grass, hmmmmm how I loved the smells of leaves, of wilderness...of sunsets, of nights, of stars....
I may not be able to describe these smells, but I remember them, and mostly pretty distinctly.
Am sure I am not the only one who cherishes memories of the smells of fire crackers, sweets, pooja items, diyas, marigold flowers, freshly painted house, etc etc during diwali....
I remember how some of my dresses smelled, and freshly polished school shoes, my Chacha Choudhary comics, my board games, my dolls.....
I even remember the aromas of one of my friends house back in Ranchi !
I remember how some people smelled..thankfully I remember only the good ones ( i mean good smells :-) ). My mom has a very distinct homely fragrance..which has not changed over all these years. If I close my eyes, and think hard enough, of people with whom I have spent a substantial amount of time, times that I cherish, I can smell them, I can smell those times spent with them, and in this way, I can almost experience them again.
My childhood is so rich of such fragrant memories. Strangely, my adulthood is not. There are much fewer memories in the folder 1998-2009. Rainy months in Bangalore, a hot plate of sizzler at 'the elements', baby smells of my neices, certain perfumes that I have used and liked, coffee day outlets in Bangalore, Akash - how he smelled during the time we were dating (which was always very intriguing to me. I even told him then, that he smelled particularly good. That would have made him happy I guess cos he quickly finished his Harley Davidson perfume bottle within a few months :-) ) Maybe I became too busy in life to take notice of the fragrances around me as I grew older. Maybe it is because our senses are constantly bombarded with so many different things around us screaming for our attention, that nothing really registers anymore.
I make it a point now to sometimes stop, breath in, try to capture the moment in small bottles and store them somewhere in my brain, so that when I am old and rocking in a large chair, and when the world mostly smells of machines, medicines, and buildings, and people, and God only knows what.....then, I can relive some of these times, in some of these places, with some of these people again....and again.
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