Places smell. Usually the smell of a place is ignored since it is familiar to us. But the smell of places is, in part, what makes us fell comfortable or uncomfortable. This becomes more obvious when we are met with an unusual smell (either good or bad). The good/bad smell sticks out and is therefore a challenge to the norm.
But our sense of smell is also stored in our memories. Mumbai is a hot, messy city. Some of the dusty and plainly less attractive scents have reminded me of my childhood in Malta. It isnâ??t that I enjoy these smells â?? itâ??s just that they are familiar to me.
Take for example the hotel room. Our rooms at the hotel are liberally sprinkled with mothballs. No I donâ??t mean that there are one or two at the back of the cupboard â?? I mean they are everywhere: In the cupboard, on the floor (they tend to congregate in the corners of the room), in the sink and in the bath. It is not due to the fact that the manager is paranoid about moths or the fact that they probably act as repellent against other nasty creepy crawlies â?? we have been informed that the management (maybe all the staff) recognize the smell of mothballs as the smell of cleanliness.
For me the smell of mothballs takes me back to when we would by a new school blazer. The shops storeroom always smelled of mothballs. Every blazer was in a plastic cover that always contained a few of the white marbles. They fascinated me as a child and I had to be reminded often that they were poisonous.
Other nostalgic smells are things like humid heat, rotting produce and horse pee in 30-degree heat. New smells include incense, food sold in stalls, and a mixture that for me is outdoor Mumbai since there is a (not unpleasant) different smell to the place.