Spice of life: Scent of nostalgia brings back beautiful memories

There is something enigmatic about fragrances and the memories they bring back. Not keeping in good health, my mother left for heavenly abode recently. Most of her belongings have her unique individual scent and the fragrance unfailingly spurs up her remembrances while I sort them for donation.

Also, she was a passionate flower-lover, and often used to express that even when she just ‘as much as’ sees a picture of roses, she experiences the bewitching scent. She was a person who mostly tried to live in the moment; and, I am, at least these days, transported to different times and phases of my life – especially through olfactory experiences.

I was in eighth grade when my friends were invited to my birthday and mother had decorated the party room abundantly with marigold flowers, for me and my friends had outgrown balloons but not decorations as such. The intoxicating fragrance takes me back to that blessed birthday.

A friend shares that the aroma of mango pickles takes her back to school-time recess, the bakery-particular breads and biscuits have an enchanting scent that I whiff (read love) to bits, freshly brewed tea/ coffee, so on and so forth.

The way we connect specific objects with people, I guess fragrances have the ability to connect us with different periods of our journey here. Talk of petrichor, monsoons my eyes visualise (while my heart jumps with joy); baby-powder and baby-cream, my 11-year-old will soon enter teenage (my mind anticipates); jasmine flowers, I feel utmost calm (the first fragrance of summer upon entering our garden), raat ki raani (I am reminded of the description given by mom): ‘It starts spreading the lovely fragrance in the evening (hence the name), and the wind carries that fragrance with it’.

Once, I read a research article about a procedure wherein upon artificially triggering certain brain areas the person could actually smell certain wafts and get reminded of people, places and/or things. Our life is nothing but myriad experiences woven together. These experiences are as much sensory as cognitive. In the long run, all these experiences fit and fall into place – some timely some late.

I am reminded of a story that is both sensorily and cognitively pleasing – it’s about a rich yet greedy bakery owner and a hard-working but poor person living in the bakery’s neighbourhood. The unfortunate man would wake up to lovely scent emanating from the bakery and dream of someday being able to afford the mouth-watering delights. With the passage of time, the bakery owner became greedier and unable to contain his thirst for more money devised a plan to extract money from the humble man. He filed a case in the local court that the man pay him monetarily in return for enjoying the scents from the bakery. The town people hoped for the case to be dismissed as baseless, but to their bewilderment the judge called a hearing. When the proceedings began, the bakery owner presented his demand. To everyone’s dismay, the judge ordered the poor man to pay the rich man. Disappointed, the former put his hand in his pocket to take out some coins – his life’s savings. The judge then turned to the greedy man and asked if he had heard the tinkle of the coins. The man, with starry eyes, exclaimed affirmatively in delight. The judge, then, suddenly announced the case as resolved – adding that in lieu of the ‘aromas of the bakery’, the poor man had paid the business-owner sufficiently via the ‘sound of the coins’.

Live long the fragrances. For as said by the French perfumer Francis Kurkdjian, “Perfume is the art that makes memory speak.”

The writer is a Jagadhri-based freelance contributor and can be reached at reemaban@gmail.com