The Scents

The smells of childhood do not arrive in sequence. They just appear and fill you with memories; it’s actually an ambush. There is no orderly procession where one memory politely follows another. Instead, something in the air shifts—barely noticeable—and suddenly you are elsewhere. Not remembering, but inhabiting. A room, a corridor, a courtyard. The past does not feel like the past in those moments. It feels current. Immediate. As if time, for a brief second, forgot to behave. Oud was always dense. Not just a smell, but a presence. It did not float in the air so much as settle into it. It lingered in clothes, in curtains, in conversations. On my maternal side of the family, it felt less like a choice and more like a constant. You did not notice it when you entered. You noticed its absence when you left. It had a way of anchoring a meeting room in the old bungalow in Solapur, a space, making it feel inhabited even when it was empty. Sandalwood was different. Quieter. If oud was a statement, sandal was a suggestion. It lived in the background at my maternal grandparents’ home in Pune. Subtle, steady, almost patient. It did not insist on being noticed. It simply existed, like an old piece of furniture that had always been there and always would be. There is something about sandal that feels… settled. As if it has already resolved whatever it needed to resolve. And then there were the sweeter notes. Rose. Saffron. They came attached to occasions. Boxes of sweets arriving from somewhere. Lids opening. A faint release of fragrance before the taste even had a chance to register. These were not everyday smells. They were markers. Signals that something out of the ordinary was happening. Celebration, perhaps. Or just generosity. Either way, they carried a sense of arrival with them. But none of these quite behave like petrichor. That first smell of rain on dry earth is not just a smell. It is an event. There is a kind of anticipation that builds before it. The sky shifts. The light changes in a way that is hard to describe but easy to recognise. And then the first drops hit the ground—not enough to cool anything, not enough to change the temperature, enough to release something ancient from the soil. It rises almost instantly. You do not go looking for it. It finds you. There is a sweetness to it, but not the kind that comes from flowers or food. It is a grounded sweetness. Something that feels earned. As if the earth itself had been holding its breath and finally exhaled. Nothing quite comes close. It is interesting then, how these early exposures quietly shape preferences. Not in an obvious, declarative way. No one sits down and decides: I will prefer earthy, musky, grounded scents for the rest of my life. It happens gradually. You find yourself drawn to certain notes, certain compositions, without fully knowing why. And when you trace it back, the answer is rarely recent.

Perfume, in that sense, is not just about smell. It is memory, familiarity, choice - to carry a certain atmosphere with you. The idea of first impressions complicates this slightly. We like to believe that first impressions are visual. That they are formed in the instant someone sees you—the posture, the expression, the way you occupy space. But scent operates on a different timeline. It is slower, but more persistent. It does not announce itself immediately. It unfolds. And once it registers, it tends to stay. A good perfume does not introduce you. It lingers after you have been introduced. There is a restraint to it. Or at least there should be. The intention is not to dominate a room. That is a different kind of statement altogether. One that often confuses presence with volume. When a scent overpowers, it stops being an extension of the person and becomes an interruption.

The more interesting effect is subtler. Someone catches a hint of something, maybe when you pass by, or when you lean in to speak and they cannot quite place it. It does not demand attention, but it earns it. And later, often much later, it resurfaces in their mind. Not as a clear recollection, but as a feeling. A vague association. That is where scent does its real work. It is less about the moment and more about the residue of the moment.

Which brings up the curious case of those who seem entirely oblivious to body odour. It is easy to dismiss it as carelessness, but that explanation feels incomplete. There is something else at play. Nose blindness is real. The brain, in its efficiency, learns to ignore constant stimuli. A smell that is always present eventually fades into the background, not because it is no longer there, but because the mind has decided it is no longer relevant. This applies to both pleasant and unpleasant scents. Someone who uses a strong perfume regularly may stop noticing it altogether. What feels like a mild application to them might be overwhelming to someone else encountering it fresh. The same applies, unfortunately, to body odour. What is obvious to others may be invisible to the person themselves. There is a strange symmetry here. Both neglect and excess can lead to the same outcome: a lack of awareness. Perhaps the more interesting question is not why this happens, but how one navigates it. How does one choose something as intangible as a scent in a way that aligns with both personal memory and social context? There is no precise answer. But there is a useful constraint: the scent should not arrive before you do, and it should not leave after you have gone. Within that boundary, there is room to experiment. To lean into preferences that have been quietly shaped over years. To choose something that feels less like an accessory and more like a continuation. For me earthy, musky, grounded scents often operate well within this space. They do not spike. They settle. They tend to reveal themselves gradually, which aligns with the idea of a first impression that unfolds rather than announces itself. In a way, they behave a little like petrichor. They do not try to compete with everything else in the environment. They wait. And when the moment is right, they surface, briefly, distinctly; and then recede, leaving behind something that is hard to describe but difficult to forget. And perhaps that is the point. Not to be remembered clearly. But to be remembered at all.

C