Smell of nostalgia

It is Amaa’s sweat and milk as she breast fed my little brother/sister and I sat next to her in the swing leaning against her listening to her humming a beautiful lullaby.

It is the smell of Amaa’s fish curry paste – Athelhegey Badhige version, made with freshly ground spice mix on her dhaa as she methodically added fresh garlic, clove by clove, fresh raanbaa, hikandhi faiy and other spices, gently twisting the heavy granite roller on the granite surface.

It is the smell of the smoke coming out of our small wood fire kitchen as it permeates through lime, coral and drying stems of palm fronds.

It is the smell of the strangely soothing mixture of decaying wood, kerosene and ripening bananas coming out of the giant wooden chest in our house as a filhi baththi is kept inside it along with a bunch of green bananas.

It is the smell of burnt tobacco/bidi infused with the green cologne we call Florida water as Bappaa moved his hands close to my face when he cut my hair.

It is the smell of spices and roasting coconut as mother and aunts constantly folded the mix with dheyfaiy over wood fires out in the Maamaage yard.

It is the smell of fresh green coconut fronds supplied by Bondobeyya as we break every third strand and wove them into thousands of pieces of thatch for our roof every second year just before Roadha.

It is the smell of decomposing roof thatch as they dry in the sun after a passing shower in Iruvai.

It is the smell of burning kerosene wafting through the house in the damp air as filhi baththi burnt from sunset to sunrise.

It is the smell of red hot metal as they get pounded, tamed, shaped on the anvil with every hammer blow in Maafaa’s Achchange and the metallic fumes they give out as they are quenched in the water bath.

It is the smell of dhun thel wafting through and spreading like an invisible blanket within and beyond Achchange as the contents of the pot still boils and bubbles distilling the essence of the varied bouquet of spices.

It is Maafaa’s old man smell, mixed with the aroma of his ‘thelhee dhoa’n e’ as he held my jaw and gently emptied a spoonful into my mouth.

It is the smell of Ammappaa’s soap and koalaa vaataro as he picked me up and hugged me after shower when he comes back from fishing and I buried my nose in his chest.

It is the smell of his breath as I laid face up in his lap, looking at his face while he recited Qur’an after noon prayers in Ramadan.

It is the smell of Ammaa’s OK scent that she soaked a cotton swab with, dabbed around her neck and tuck between her ear and her head.

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Some smells penetrate deep into us, to the core of our souls. They are remnants of people, things and moments that we lived in the past. Some smells aren’t pleasant but they had everlasting endnotes that linger on for life. They make us want to envelope ourselves in that, just once more because of the profound meaning they evoke in us. Some smells are vivid, so vivid that they take you straight to a different place that transcends time. They are stories. They are moving pictures. They are so real. Some remind you of how poor you were. Some remind you how loved you were. Some remind you how happy you were. They remind you of your roots, your beginning.

Take a deep breath, inhale… inhale the world into you.

Amaa – my mother
Bappaa – my father
Ammaa – my maternal aunt
Ammappaa – my uncle (Ammaa’s husband)
Maafaa – my maternal grand father
Filhi baththi – kerosene lamp literally translated as bottle lamp as these were upcycled jam or juice jars
Bidi – a hand-rolled cigarette, rolled mainly with newspaper, cured and flavored tobacco
Athelhegey Badhige – Kitchen of the atoll chief’s house
Dhaa – a slab of thick granite about 8-10 inches high, a foot across and about 18 inches long used to grind spices. The complete set includes a roller pin of the same granite material.
Maamaage – Grand mother’s house
Dheyfah – an elongated metal spatula that allowed the user to stand a couple of feet away from the wok and still reach
Iruvai – north east monsoon
Bondobeyya – a friend of my father who gave us coconut fronds
OK Scent – a rectangular bottle containing a highly concentrated perfume
Koalaa vaataro – Eau de cologne
Achchange – a metal worker’s work-shed
Dhun thel – Essential oil distilled from a mix of spices
Thelhee dho haa’n e – pounded/pulverized areca nut betel and lime mix