***********************************************************************************************************************
Of course Oliver Wendell Holmes is talking eminent sense...he had an MD from the Harvard Medical School where he taught when he was not writing poems and talking prose.
When I was a kid at Muthukur in the early 1950s, there was this lone giant street-side tree we used to call: Manu Sampangi (Big-Tree Parijat). Come April, it used to bloom and would be crowned with heaps of white flowers that had a typical faint fragrance. Within a week they used to drop down lining the street under it with a carpet of white flowers...each one like a tiny shehnai (oboe):
After I reached IIT KGP campus in 1965, I was missing this tree somewhat in that heaven for tree-lovers. Till one April when I was walking towards Gate # 5 in a hurry, I suddenly stopped and looked up. And lo and behold, there was this lone giant tree by the junction standing majestically and in early bloom. And I was at once transported to my school days at Muthukur. My wife used to call its long and narrow flowers ending in smooth petals: Raama Baanams (Arrows of Raam).
My friend NP told me once about a Parijat tree in the backyard of their hostel in the Engg College at Anantapur where he studied for five years. And when he and his friends suddenly smelled the sweet scent of its blooms, they used to fish out their bulky (unreadable) books and start pretending to read...it meant their annual exams were a fortnight away.
And then in the KGP campus one day I was getting a new scent that was simply exotic to me. And I asked my Bengali friend, HKD, about it, and he took me to a huge tree and asked me to look up. And I saw bunches of its white-green flowers and was charmed. And HKD told me its Bengali name: Saptaparni...every branch had 7 bunches of leaves, every bunch had 7 flowers and every flower 7 petals:
************************************************************************************************************************
...Memory, imagination, old sentiments and associa-
tions, are more readily reached through the sense of
SMELL than by almost any other channel.
Of course the particular odours which act upon
each person's susceptibilities differ. Oh yes! I will
tell you some of mine. The smell of phosphorus is
one of them. During a year or two of adolescence I
used to be dabbling in chemistry a good deal, and as
about that time I had my little aspirations and passions
like another, some of these things got mixed up with
each other: orange-coloured fumes of nitrous acid,
and visions as bright and transient; reddening litmus-
paper, and blushing cheeks; cheu!
"Soles occidere et red ire possunt,"
but there is no reagent that will redden the faded
roses of eighteen hundred and spare them! But,
as I was saying, phosphorus fires this train of associa-
tions in an instant; its luminous vapours with their
penetrating odour throw me into a trance: it comes
to me in a double sense "trailing clouds of glory."
Only the confounded Vienna matches, ohne plwsphor-
geruch, have worn my sensibilities a little...
... There may be a physical reason for the
strange connection between the sense of smell and
the mind. The olfactory nerve, so my friend, the
Professor, tells me is the only one directly connected
with the hemispheres of the brain, the parts in
which, as we have every reason to believe, the
intellectual processes are performed. To speak more
truly, the olfactory nerve is not a nerve at all, he says,
but a part of the brain, in intimate connection with its
anterior lobes. Whether this anatomical arrangement
is at the bottom of the facts I have mentioned I will
not decide, but it is curious enough to be worth
remembering. Contrast the sense of taste, as a source
of suggestive impressions, with that of smell. Now
the Professor assures me that you will find the nerve
of taste has no immediate connection with the brain
proper, but only with the prolongation of the spinal
cord.
...Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
Of course Oliver Wendell Holmes is talking eminent sense...he had an MD from the Harvard Medical School where he taught when he was not writing poems and talking prose.
When I was a kid at Muthukur in the early 1950s, there was this lone giant street-side tree we used to call: Manu Sampangi (Big-Tree Parijat). Come April, it used to bloom and would be crowned with heaps of white flowers that had a typical faint fragrance. Within a week they used to drop down lining the street under it with a carpet of white flowers...each one like a tiny shehnai (oboe):
We used to collect the flowers, insert their stems into our tiny mouths and try and blow a piping sound competing with each other. Their smell is unique and I never found anything like it.
After I reached IIT KGP campus in 1965, I was missing this tree somewhat in that heaven for tree-lovers. Till one April when I was walking towards Gate # 5 in a hurry, I suddenly stopped and looked up. And lo and behold, there was this lone giant tree by the junction standing majestically and in early bloom. And I was at once transported to my school days at Muthukur. My wife used to call its long and narrow flowers ending in smooth petals: Raama Baanams (Arrows of Raam).
My friend NP told me once about a Parijat tree in the backyard of their hostel in the Engg College at Anantapur where he studied for five years. And when he and his friends suddenly smelled the sweet scent of its blooms, they used to fish out their bulky (unreadable) books and start pretending to read...it meant their annual exams were a fortnight away.
And then in the KGP campus one day I was getting a new scent that was simply exotic to me. And I asked my Bengali friend, HKD, about it, and he took me to a huge tree and asked me to look up. And I saw bunches of its white-green flowers and was charmed. And HKD told me its Bengali name: Saptaparni...every branch had 7 bunches of leaves, every bunch had 7 flowers and every flower 7 petals:
And the blooming of these trees spreading their fragrance all over the campus heralded the Durga Puja and Reco season. At the height of its short flowering season one day, I took my pushbike and rode all over the campus trying to get away from the sweet smell. And found it impossible. The whole campus was awash with Saptaparni trees and their bunches of flowers. And I continued my cycle ride to Gole Bazaar 5 km away...and still there was no escape.
Not everyone liked their strong scent and dubbed it pungent (my wife used to be allergic to it).
But I loved it.
But I loved it.
Back in Hyderabad I used to miss it...and I concluded that Hyderabad was devoid of these trees...till we shifted houses and I found a lone tree by the roadside in a new locality...transporting me back to KGP and its DP.
The sense of smell has its flip-side too.
My youngest niece was born at my mom's place in Gudur in 1986 (she is now wrapping up her PhD at Delaware). And to reach my mom's spacious house at Gudur, one has to go through a narrow lane...like it is said that to reach Heaven one has to wade through the Vaitarani (Baitarani) river of the Hades (according to Garuda Purana). This narrow lane is lined by boundary walls of hutments whose urchins (and old men) didn't follow the IIT KGP Gymkhana Rule scribbled on the walls of its bathrooms:
"Our aim is to keep this place clean...your aim will help!"
So there was this everlasting fragrance of pee pervading this lane. During her childhood, my niece and her family used to spend their summer vacations at my mom's place in Gudur, while they were otherwise living in a posh locality of Bangalore. A few years later they shifted to Solapur where they had to temporarily take a house on rent in not so posh a locality. And the first time my niece traveled there she was asleep at midnight in their car, till she suddenly woke up and scolded her dad:
"Why are you driving us back to Gudur?"
My MD didi told me that one of the symptoms of early onset of Parkinson's is a spurious sense of smell...smelling non-existing scents...pee-scent often.
Nose is a special organ. It functions till death unfailingly. Otherwise you can't breathe unless you are a yogi in samadhi. All the other 4 sense organs can fail and still we can continue living. That is why we have names for their impairments like:
deaf, dumb, blind and numb.
Failure to smell has no such common name (the medical parlance is anosmia)...and there is a red underline beneath it in my spell-checker to prove it.
And nose takes over when mouth shuts down...we have nasal feeding tubes...but not the other way round; except for short periods when there is nose-block resulting in ear-pain!
Noses come in all shapes and sizes...the stub nose, the aquiline nose, the turned-up nose ;)
The one that our most famous politico now wears here in Hyderabad can be classed as: 'bulbous nose' (see cartoon above)...and he must be rather proud of it. Easy to intake snuff though...
Let me end this post in a rare nostalgic (nastalgic) intimate note:
Most girls in our family used to get their noses drilled at a tender age to wear their nose studs. But my wife's family didn't have this tradition. So when she got married to me she was studless...
I offered to buy her a tiny gold nose stud (all that I could afford) provided she gets her nose pierced. She agreed and wore it till her death and thereafter. It was this way:
Soon after she was wheeled into the ICU (a week before she breathed her last), her aaya (female helper) came out and gave us a packet containing her gold ornaments like bangles, chain, ear rings, and mangalyam. And said she couldn't tease out her nose stud which sort of became part of her nose and got stuck to it. We asked her to leave it alone.
And when she was wheeled out after she passed away, the aaya showed us her nose stud intact, which we appreciated and gifted her Rs 500 as tip for her affectionate services to my wife during those six days.
And she felt happy.
And when she was wheeled out after she passed away, the aaya showed us her nose stud intact, which we appreciated and gifted her Rs 500 as tip for her affectionate services to my wife during those six days.
And she felt happy.
The next day, several people, including our pundit, hinted that the nose stud ought to be teased apart. And my son and I put our feet down.
...And she left for her undoubted heaven with her nose stud in its place...rather...
...Posted by Ishani
No comments:
Post a Comment