A whiff of the past

Yesterday, I bought a perfumed deodorant from Nilgiris and its fragrance (citrus and floral) immediately transported me back to my college days in Belgaum when I swore by ‘Oriflame ‘

It’s uncanny, isn’t it? How certain smells bring specific memories and time periods to your mind.

Like every time I pass hawkers selling flowers on the footpath and I get a whiff of jasmine fragrance , I get reminded of my early childhood in Sholapur , where my dad’s sisters used to wear jasmine flowers ( called ‘gajra’ in Marathi) in their hair.

I love the smell of frying onions :) , I think it’s the most appetizing smell in the world! The smell of frying onions reminds me of home..Comfy and cozy home – a place where mom cooks the yummiest dishes , dad dispenses pearls of wisdom over a cup of chai , brother battles with me over the remote ( ya we still do that at our age ! ) and my sister and I exchange notes on fashion . Ah how I miss home!

Similarly, the smell of tea transports me to the time when I was in Pune living with my Grandma. I was working with Aptech as a counselor for about 3 months while I was waiting for my MBA admission. I used the famous tumtum ( six-seat auto to the uninformed ) for transport and on my way back, the auto stand which was next to a chai ki tapiri would get enveloped by a tantalizing smell of tea and frying pakodas and I would long to reach home to have my own cuppa .

The smell of lemons brings memories of my holidays in Sangli where my dad’s sister lived. She had a variety of fruit trees in her backyard including a lemon tree which produced oodles and oodles of lemons. My cousins and I had a gala time picking lemons, making nimbu paani, or just eating it with salt. Invariably, one of us would land up with a sore throat and my aunt would warn us from eating any more of those sour treats. But none of us cared and continued on our lemon eating spree much to her chagrin.

On to some commercial smells, the smell of Rasna reminds me of summers in Ludhiana where I grew up. I can visualize my brother and me on a hot summer afternoon, the fan on at its full capacity, reading Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and sipping on Rasna kala khatta .

Rooafzah again takes me back to a particular time when I had just started working after my MBA. I shared a flat with a few friends and we used to wash down our breakfast with Rooafzah. Not that we particularly enjoyed the taste but I had bought a bottle in a bust of health consciousness and was stuck with it, so my friends chipped in to finish off my misery quickly. Thank God for good friends !

Commercial or non commercial, it’s always wonderful to be transported to a place and time you left behind , Isn’t it?

Copyright(C) 2009 Neha Shinde