The Olfactory sensors

I really feel strange how different types of smell(we used to call it this way whether it was a good scent or a bad smell :)) gets associated with different types of memories.
The very simple biscuit by Parle or Brittania takes me back to school days where we used to wait ever so eagerly for the 2 biscuits that we received during our recess. The smell still so fresh but the days so long gone. Mary was the old lady who used to bring those bisucits to all the classes - hope she is still around. We never thanked her during those days but today when i remember her i thank her silently.

When the season moves from winter to summer in between comes the days when you see all the leaves on the ground and the trees standing tall and barren. The smell of these times triggers the fear of exams. Still i get those fluttering butterflies in my stomach. Still it brings back memories of how unfinished my lessons were and we used to rote the lessons in the very last moment - stranger still is, i remember those roted lessons to this day.

Even today when i buy a new book i turn the pages and first smell it - it takes me back to times when we joined a new class and brandished our new books from our overloaded bags.If you have a book from that era try going through the pages and smelling it once - you will go back to the same room, same bench of the same class.

When i go for a stroll in the wintry night today the scent of fresh dew on the grass transports me to the lanes of our colony where we grew up as a child.That childhood and that colony seems to be so out of this present world. I really wonder was that in this life or another....

The incense sticks have their own story to tell - it used to be the smell that you woke up to in the mornings - mother - the greatest of all the Gods - would have already started her puja for well being of her kids. This used to be the start of her day of unending chores - i wonder how we got everything ready at the right time - be it tiffin box for school, be it the well washed and well ironed school dress, be it the snacks in the evening. I really wonder how could she do everything sigle-handedly whole day for so many years unerringly and untiringly.

I really thank our Maker for weaving such an intricate connection between the smell and the memories - especially because both entities are intangible but still they evoke so powerfull emotions in the human mind.

The HUM...

The story goes back a long way - about the time when I was 6 or 7 years old. My father used to drop me to school on the ATLAS cycle that he had. I used to sit in front - on the cycle rod with my two legs on two sides and feets resting on the front mud gaurd. Strange scene if you think about it now but it was norm those days. And i used to be so happy riding that way - the school scare all forgotten. The school was about a couple of kilometers from our home and it was a ride with up and low gradients both. But what always keeps coming back to my mind about all this is - my father used to hum all the way to school. It was not any particular song as such, it was just a hum and he would do that only at that time of day - when he was taking me to school. He was not into music in any way so i am sure that it was not a song - i used to think that i would give anything to know what that hum was....Now i do not think of deciphering it any more - because i think i know what it was ......
Change to another time and another era.......
I am new to fatherhood - got an 8 month old angel. When he cries or when he is scared i hold him close to myself and instantaneously start "humming" away his fears. And i know that i am not singing anything in particular - i am just soothing him and allaying his fears and apprehensions.
That's the reason i have stopped trying to decipher the hum of my father because i think i have inherited the same 'hum' from him.