My time machine to the past

Beautiful dust mites floating in the sunlight, dancing in suspended motion. It makes everything so mystical. I would be laughing with my cousins, chasing the hens in the coop or even just lying down in my grandmothers cool dark room, staring into space, thinking of nothing in particular, when my eyes would stray by its own volition to the shaft of golden sunlight falling from the window or from a crack in the tile roof. There they would stay, my eyes and my attention, unable to tear away, hypnotized to a wistful dreamy trance. Everything under that soft light was molten gold, the dust mites turned into errant fairies that soared along with the overactive imagination of my 9 year old brain.
Whenever I get terribly homesick, the way when my heart feels really heavy and my throat pains, I put on ‘Venkatesha Suprabatham’. It gives me instant relief, though making me even more wistful for the days that went by. In my father’s ancestral home in Trivandrum, we used a green bedroom on the upper level with a small verandha which opened up into the tiny village hidden by thick foliage. It was always slightly chilly in the mornings, making it even more cozier to sleep…it was during this snug moments that the ‘venkatesha suprabatham’ would blare through those trees, coupled with a multitude of reassuring, homey noises like the pressure cooker going off from the kitchen underneath, dad snoring from the next bed, the dog barking outside. It would send me into a luxurious limbo of sleep and wakefulness; stretching contentedly I would savor my waking moments, knowing that I belonged, there to that moment.
I think, if asked to name some vitals smells from our childhood, most of us will come up with at least one fruit, rain wet earth and a favorite dish.. Well… I do have all this and some more…The list of comforting smells which would conjure up my childhood is long and complicated…I do have a strong olfactory memory. It would go onto something like this; intoxicating carbon dioxide laden fresh night air, petrol fumes (we used to stay in a house next to a petrol bunk,when my sister and I were small),camphour,fresh green mangoes, the musty smell of old silk sarees, Yardley lavender(my grandmother’s favorite soap), chalk, bata leather, moth balls, coconut oil, jasmine, old bound books, sandalwood incense and it goes on and on.. I catch a whiff here and there of some of the above mentioned items, and it transports me to a time, when everything was good and not so good and now, beyond my reach.
Some days I worry myself into a panic. It starts innocuously enough, with me gazing at my grandmother’s picture on my dresser and reminiscing about her. I start to think about her and almost always, the first thing that comes into my mind was her touch…it was warm, soft and firm at the same time…and I would try to remember her hands, work-worn, lined and tender…Whether she was cooking, feeding us, stitching or even speaking…her strokes were minimal, efficient and loving.. Satisfied with my memory, I try to imagine her voice and sometimes, just sometimes, I draw a blank. In those worrying moments when I despair that forgetting her voice would be the first step in forgetting her memory…I focus back again her touch, which evokes her eyes, alight with affection, to her smile and then finally her voice and then my panic ebbs…slowly I recede back into the warm cocoon of my childhood memories, strong and clear as ever.
The sensation of taste is very potent, because it is almost always accompanied by the sensations of smell and sight…Take the staple food of my family, red fish curry, I doubt the fish curry would be half as appealing if it didn’t smell the way it did or didn’t have that fiery red hue…Who wants to eat a sweet but odourless colorless mango? But nothing summons the instant advent of gratifying childhood memories as the food of our childhood, which, over time, acquires a cult status in our memory. It holds sway of the comfort, the sense of security and belonging and the key to one’s past and identity with a taste, a whiff or even sometimes, a glance.