Smells Like Memory: A Postcolonial Reflection on Olfactory Sociology
By Sulakshana Varhadkar
Some blog posts create themselves. Others reside in your skin for decades like scent.
This piece was first created in Marathi, turned into a video during the COVID- 19 lockdown, and has actually taken a trip with me,
across languages, lands, and lives. It has actually additionally been plagiarised.
So let me reclaim it now, not just as content, but as a social archive of aroma and identification.
Olfactory Sociology: A Sensory Map of Identity
Olfactory Sociology is the study of exactly how scents form culture, memory and identification.
It examines just how scent is linked to class, caste, ritual, migration, belonging and also taboo. This isn’t a poetic allegory it is an anthropological reality.
Anthropologists like David Howes, Constance Classen, and Annick Le Guérer have shown how scents are encoded right into cultural significance, some admired, some turned down.
In India, we do not simply scent; we acquire smells. We pass them on, covered in rituals, kitchen areas, temple yards and stormy afternoons.
An odor is not simply an experience
yet it is a social code.
Smells That Increased Me: My Individual Atlas
When I mention smell, I mention:
Kala Masala from Nashik: The smoky, earthy mix that draws me into youth mid-days, cooking areas where ladies stirred memory right into every pot.
Iskcon Holy place’s Rosewater Teertha: A fragrance that just gets here with Sunday early mornings, with the feel of my daddy’s hand and the noise of chants.
Burnt Bombil in Malvani Houses. That sharp coastal aroma that still restores a good friend that never excused her food, her salt, her mother.
Ginger, clove and black tea boiling on the oven: The default scent of monsoon research.
In D.N. Nagar, the dhoop at Shitladevi Mandir, or the aroma of Anant blossoms in August, talk more clearly to me than any kind of preaching.
Cross-Cultural Aromas:
Currently in Brazil, I live among scents that whisper across societies.
Tofu’s neutral moisture makes my Chinese and Japanese friends psychological; it advises me of Kyoto early mornings.
Coriander in hen curry, as soon as offered to a white Brazilian next-door neighbor, was denied, not for preference, but also for its ‘ethnic ‘smell. She linked it with Afro-Brazilian kitchen areas. This had not been culinary, it was olfactory casteism.
My French good friend is relocated by the scent of baking apples with cinnamon, it reminds her of her grandma.
My Finnish buddy identifies tornados by their smell. My Italian buddy educates style. My Colombian pal tears up at the odor of eco-friendly coffee fruit. My German pals smell like leather-bound books and lavender ironing spray.
Scent is our language, more accurate than words.
Wasabi and soy sauce send a shock with my nose, a cheerful one.
The odor of based cardamom, burning groundnuts, or eggplant being roasted in a tandoor reminds me of household bbqs without a grill.
Vicks, Amrutanjan, Kailas Jeevan, these are my medical lullabies.
Ponds powder, fresh LifeBuoy soap, and the mild have an odor of boiled milk, these are the smells of normality of 1990 s kitchens where ladies stirred milk with stories.
Social Anchors, Not Scents
These aren’t just smells.
They are works with on my psychological map.
They are social supports that hold me consistent when my body is far from home.
They advise me that India arrive have as the smell of frying okra, incense on a white cotton dupatta, or the burning ghee on a temple diya.
This post, this memory is mine. It was born in my kitchen area, finished my bag, and composed initially in Marathi. It was stolen when, turned into a video next off, and now released once again in English.
This is not material, it is social memory.
Please do not publish it under your name.
That is not motivation. That is theft of life.
I do not take a trip to collect passport stamps.
I take a trip to collect sensory facts.
I keep in mind through smell. I return with fragrance.
This is exactly how I belong throughout societies, kitchens, periods, and silences.
© Sulakshana Varhadkar
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