The trail of scents- a journey through time

This is an attempt to remember the trail of scents in my life. I’ve been trying to go as far back as I can remember. There are six scents that seem to overlap in my oldest memory. Old Spice, Brut, Yardley Red Rose and Lavender, Jannat-ul-Firdaus attar, and frankincense.

Growing up Old Spice bottles were always around the house. A sign of my father’s presence. In that sense it’s a sepia colored scent. Spicy and woody and daddy. On occasion it was also used to disinfect childhood scrapes—scraped knees, bloody toes, scratches of unknown origin. The word ‘lotion’ struck terror in my heart through those years. It always meant the inevitable sting and burn when the Old Spice was poured on the latest bruise. Loud sobs and tears announced to the world my latest misadventures.

Brut was one of those Gulf non-resident Indian (NRI) classics. Every suitcase returning to India for the holidays would have a couple of the emerald green long-necked bottles to be liberally sprayed on the self and to be distributed among favorites or those ready to bestow favors. I can vaguely recall the citrusy, astringent smell but I don’t remember it on mom or dad. But I am pretty sure they must have used it.

Yardley Red Rose and Lavender-scented soaps were a favorite of my paternal grandmother’s. She hoarded them in her closely-guarded steel trunk. And no matter how many she had, more was always welcome. For the longest time, I wondered if England smelled of lavender and red roses. As I was to discover years later, it didn’t. But that’s a story for another post.

Jannat-ul-Firdaus attar was a favorite of my paternal grandfather’s. He would soak small balls of cotton wool with the dark moss green attar and place them in his ears, dressed in his pristine white shirt and dhoti, on his way to the local mosque where he was muezzin. The attar was another favorite among Gulf NRIs to give as gifts. Everything about the attar was opulence to my young mind. The red box with the white silk lining, the ornate stopper. The ads of a princess being rescued by a prince on his white horse or horse-drawn carriage (I no longer remember, correctly), presumably both of them doused in epic quantities of the attar giving them the courage to gallop blindly into an unknown but heavenly future. I don’t know if I can trust my smell memory when it comes to this perfume, but I think it was a strange mix of wood, and citrus and jasmine. I can almost smell it even as I think of it. I can see my grandfather in my mind’s eye clearer than I have seen him in years.

And then there’s the ever present frankincense. How could it be otherwise having grown up in Oman. Frankincense to scent homes, to scent clothes, to scent the body, to greet guests and loved ones. Woodsy, heady, resinous, creamy, with a hint of something resembling lemons…something clean-- guaranteed to put you in a calm state of mind, a smile on the face. Mixed in with the scent of qahwa or Arabic coffee, strong and scented with cardamom and saffron accompanied by the sweetest dates and saffron-scented, rosewater-soaked Omani halwa. These were days for long chats, reclining against pillows in carpeted rooms shaded from the bright desert heat. Gatherings of women. Gatherings of men. Children crossing over.

And then later…

The first French perfume I remember on my parents’ dresser was YSL’s Opium. I have a vivid memory of the box in which the bottle came. Deep, rust red with gold leaves and gold lettering. The perfume deliciously opulent, spicy, oriental. I learned later that it was born the same year I was. And then mummy had a large container of the same deliciously scented body cream. It sat on her dresser for years. I remember opening it every now and then to inhale the scent deeply.

This was also around the time a neighbor, an Arab lady became a friend of the family. I remember so vividly her dark bedroom and the giant dresser with what seemed like a million perfume bottles. All sorts of perfumes. Attars, oils, sprays, colognes. It would have been a perfumer’s dream, I imagine. Fatima aunty’s perfumes were spoken of forever afterwards in tones of great fascination.

Along with the frankincense, the other scent that ran through my childhood was the scent of the roses from the Mussanah farm. Pink, blowsy, richly perfumed growing out in the desert somewhere.

My mother’s home in Malappuram will always be the smell of the jasmine by the front door whose buds unfurled at 7 in the evening just as the train went by the Kuttipuram station. My cousins first alerted me to this punctual flowering bush.  That and the smell of my grandmother’s fish curry that forever hung around the kitchen.  

The scents of adulthood are a different story for another post.