Having a pretty long nose does not always imply a sharp nasal sensory system. But my nose has been my best sensory organ right from childhood. My earliest memories of people and places are associated with distinctive smells, leaving me with specific olfactory memories.
Our kitchen used to smell differently as seasons change. The warm kitchen with its soft smells cuddled me from the cold during the monsoon mornings, a precious feeling my sister and I cherished and the only reason we woke up early. But the kitchen in summer suffocated us with the smells of sauteing and simmering and the fetid humid heat.
Kerala winters are not remarkably "wintery", but still the chilly winds at night, combined with the redolence of Christmas delicacies such as palappam , stew and roasted meat, smell ecstatic.
Each mode of transport carries olfactory memories for me. Journeys to our paternal house in Nilambur, a town in Malappuram district, still stand out for their assorted scents. The early-morning autorickshaw trip to the railway station, with its brimming enthusiasm and joyous anticipation, smelled of the crispiness of dawn. I still love the railway station at daybreak for the freshness of the aromas wafting from the samovars and vegetarian refreshment rooms. Even the newspaper and book stalls smell good. A whiff of the train — I later identified it as the odour of rust — still transports me back to those nostalgic rides and pleasures of travelling with family. My mother packed our meals in banana leaves made pliable over fire and reinforced with newspaper sheets. The aroma when opening each packet has no parallel, giving you a ready appetite as the smells of rice and curries and the subtly seared leaves combine to set your mouth watering.
The Shoranur-Nilambur broad-gauge passenger train transports you from the smells of hot climes to the wild scents of nature and forests, while your eyes busily savour the serenity of wildlife and teak forests.
Of course, the buses too convey clear-cut smells each season. Autumn, spring and summer have breezy, cheery and airy smells, while the monsoon fills the buses with a medley of odours as the window shutters are pulled down to keep off the rain. Buses in Kerala earlier had a thick cloth curtain flapping on either side and running the entire length of their windows, lending a romantic feel and smell of rain.
The boat trips too come up with specific nature-soaked smells, especially in Kuttanad. In certain areas in this rice bowl, transport is only by water, mainly on state-run boats. These vessels bustle with life, and the expanse of the backwaters with the scenic beauty seductively nourishes all your senses.
The smell of air travel mesmerised me in my childhood with its undertone of luxury and tidiness, but novel notions of nature and greenery rule it out from my nostalgic memories.
The facial masks that now guards us from the virus are the need of the hour, though they suppress our olfactory peregrinations.
