I never knew that an early morning bath would make me this sick! I have been nursing a bad bout of cold for the last three days and it is still as persistent as ever, cannot believe I have my nose and throat blocked in this sweltering weather which could literally fry eggs on the pavement. And now that I have my olfactory avenues are all stuffed and I am oblivious of all the smells and odours around me, I think of the various smells that remind and reminded me of so many things. Each smell weaves a singular story in itself.
How strange it is that the smell from freshly washed hair of every person is so...umm...indescribable. I wish I knew the word that could be used to describe such a fragrance. Though the fragrance of the hair product used makes a huge difference, but a non-fragrant shampoo wouldn’t fail to create a similar. I remember as a child clinging to Ma, my nose buried in her freshly washed wet hair, when she stepped out of the bath. I have found the same smell in the hair of all the men that I have dated; it is so pure - maybe as pure as the smell from the hot soil when it is cooled by the first spell of rain.
Lately I have also come to realise how I get so attached to little things in my life. I remember losing a pendrive way back in my senior year of college, I missed it terribly then and spilled gallons of tears over it! Yeah, tears are like always on the brink of spilling out of my eyes but that was a good pendrive. Same with my cellphone, though I know that I have lost it and it’s not coming back, when I hear the old ringtone ringing I start rummaging my pockets and bag only to let the realisation set in that it’s another goner.
Getting back to smells, I use a certain nails and hands lotion which has this peculiar smell that reminds me Grandma’s pickled mangoes. Curious, is it not? Yet again, there’s this smell of sundried clothes washed in surf excel that remind me of Ma and makes me feel so warm and safe. Ma’s wardrobe smells so pleasantly of it. And Dad still smells of some cologne he used long back though he doesn’t use it any longer, it seems that fragrance has stuck to his personality or maybe it was always the smell of his persona.
Then there are the scary smells, I detested and to this day detest the smell of diesel from the public buses. I have suffered from motion sickness for a long time and this particular odour happens to be single reason to which the cause can be attributed. I also remember being told as child that one could also smells snakes and I thought that I did smell one on some such occasion. I was never the kind who would go chasing after a snake but I do remember giving one particular snaky creature the fright of its life. Rather we both scared the life out of each other and backed away at such awesome speeds! It was on that night I realised that they were as scared of us as we were wary of them.
However, the most heavenly fragrance is the fragrance of love. How one tends to attach oneself to the smells and odours and fragrances of the one person one is in love with. Having been in a romantic relationship for a brief period of my life, I remember how I had become attached to the fragrance that was soaked in his shirt, his skin and I would smell it around me when I was alone. It’s eerie. I always thought it to be his deodorant but only later realised it was more of his sweat than anything else. I never knew the smell of sweat could be so intoxicating, is it not supposed to stink? There have also been a couple of occasions that I have picked up the same fragrances while passing by total strangers and it’s plunged into such nostalgic desires of longing.
But then, it is very human to be human, I am sure. We readily attach ourselves to these really trivial phenomena, and these become permanently etched in our memories like the beautifully stained glass works. Just as easy it is to recall the stories associated with them, as difficult it is to get rid of them. They stay on like the decorative vestiges.
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