About Smell
The cauliflowers covered with batter were frying crisp into that beautiful golden color. The chopped garlic and onions were being sauteed in soy sauce. I was making Gobi Manchurian. Apparently, my kitchen was filled with such aroma of the food but I had no idea until someone told me so.
When the monsoon hit Bangalore, I lost my sense of smell for some time to severe cold. The other day I visited Lalbagh with my family during the mango festival. Everyone was exclaiming about how the whole place smelled so mangolicious and I was getting nothing. I had to be content with just the sight and the taste.
As told again and again by elders, you don’t value something until you lose it. The pandemic was one such that reminded us of the value of many things especially smell. My curiosity about the sense of smell began when, I first learned that smell constitutes a significant part of taste. But we rarely realize it. Often we refuse to try some food because we might not be liking its smell. On the other hand, we often cannot resist having a bite of something because it smells so good!
When I cook I mostly say something is amiss or excess by the smell of it. And that’s exactly why I struggle to cook when I catch a cold. Curries like the sambhar taste much better with that handful of chopped coriander not just because it adds to the taste but also the smell.
One of my all-time beloved cinematic/literary obsessions is ‘Perfume: the story of a murderer. The protagonist, the olfactory genius Jean-Baptiste Grenouille’s homicidal journey to make the perfect perfume does provoke the most intriguing questions about the existence of self and society. His realization that he cannot smell himself nor can anyone and yet we all strive to smell good for others is the truth of human social life.
I have bought fragrant pouches even when I knew the guests might not even peek into the washrooms; what if they do and what if they smell something I am too used to and never realized. We carry that small roll-on of perfume because we are so worried about how we smell, or that cologne gives so much confidence for a date. Smell has that ability to shame and fame.
Sissel Tolaas, acclaimed odor artist and scientist once wore a guy’s sweat at a party. She describes the reaction of other guests as ‘amazing’; men being curiously intrigued and women confused given how the way she looked and smelled was so different.
Tolaas’s interesting endeavors include replicating cities as smellscapes by capturing and mapping the smells of cities; also creating a language for smells by naming them.
The western languages have limited vocabulary to name smells and are mostly named after the specific sources of smell — as in smells like a rose or the odor of shit. Meanwhile, the Jahai tribe of Malaysia and the JHunter-gatherer tribes of Thailand like Maniq have a richer vocabulary of smell with words of abstract expressions. For example, the word Itpit means the smell of durian, bearcat, popcorn, soap, and flowers; Yet the word stands as a ‘word only for the smell of these’ and is disconnected from them materially.
The sense of smell is so inevitable and yet we rarely think of it in a world of visuals and sounds. Once I did a QnA of favorite smells with my Instagram (the story highlight ‘the smell project’) followers and I deliberately banned petrichor (the earthy scent that accompanies a rain after a dry weather). The answers were interestingly diverse; they ranged from the aroma of a biriyani pot being opened to the smell of dried rubber sheets. Our core memories — good or bad are embedded in streams of smells. With every sniff, we get a whiff of life.
