Olfactory associations

Temple festivals had the fragrance of balloons and glass bangles; the cold air was filled with the aroma of fried fish

Certain fragrances take us down memory lane. My grandmother had the habit of placing empty agarbathi covers inside her wooden box where she used to keep her clothes and other belongings. Her dresses always smelled of agarbathis. Even now, when I light the agarbathi in the evening during my prayer time, I remember my dear grandmother. I recall the cosy sleep close to my grandmother smelling her perfumed outfit. My grandparents took care of me when my parents were away for their jobs. We lived in our ancestral home located in a village amid paddy fields.

The sight of paddy fields brings to me the fragrance of dried straw. We children used to play hide and seek in the heaped-up dried straw and on the raw straw scattered on the yard for drying. The paddy harvest period was long-awaited by us children. At noon, the labourers were given rice gruel for lunch. They ate it using spoons made of jackfruit leaves. The aroma of eating the hot gruel with these spoons was mouth-watering.

Even now, Onam brings the smell of homemade upperi and sharkkara varatti. My grandfather took charge of preparing these snacks, along with achappam, murukku, kuzhalappam and kaliyadakka in fresh coconut oil. These were later kept in airtight containers and munched by us children all through the year. The junk food and the bakery items were exotic to us then.