Forgotten Sense

Smell. The most invisible of our senses. The most underestimated too. Yet, it holds power over memory, emotion and identity in ways words can barely explain.

One faint whiff, and time collapses. A smell can drag you back decades, to a classroom chalk dust, a mother’s shawl, the first rain on parched soil, or the antiseptic scent of a hospital corridor. It is the only sense that refuses to obey logic. It doesn’t ask for permission. It invades, evokes and overwhelms.

Smell is the language of memory. Scientists say our smell receptors are wired directly to the part of brain which is the seat of emotion. No translator needed. That’s why smell feels rather than speaks. We don’t remember smells, we relive them.

In Kashmir, smell lives in the background. The saffron fields of Pampore have their own poetry of fragrance. So does the smoke of kangri embers in the chill of December. The scent of noon chai rising from a samovar, the mix of pine, snow and nostalgia at Gulmarg. It’s not just sensory. It’s cultural memory.

Smell, more than sight or sound, carries the soul of a place. Wars erase cities, floods drown land, but what remains etched in survivors is often a smell. That of the smoke, the rot, the rain. Even trauma has an odour. And healing, perhaps, begins when we can breathe again without fear.

Yes, we live in times where screens dominate. And everything is visual. We scroll, swipe and like. But smell resists digitization. You can’t text it, post it or tag it. There is no “send smell” option yet! Maybe that’s why, it’s the most human of all senses. It demands presence.

In classrooms, I often tell my media students that journalism and storytelling are also about smell. Every newsroom, every field report, has a scent. The smell of old newsprint, of tension in unsettled crowd, of dust rising with urgency. When you lose the ability to “smell” a story, popularly called nose for the news, you lose the pulse of truth.

Smell connects body to soul. There is psychology in perfume and philosophy in aroma. Why else do we seek comfort in the smell of our own clothes, our home, our people? Smell is belonging. It’s how babies recognize mothers before sight. How we remember people in absence. How grief smells like old wood and rain.

And then, there is the silence of smell in our language. We have hundreds of words for light, colour and sound. But very few for smell. We say “nice,” “bad,” “fresh,” “stale.” That’s it. Our vocabulary is impoverished, even though our smell memory is vast. Poets tried to fill that gap. They made smell lyrical. Like “the musk of memory,” “the perfume of pain” blah, blah… But even poetry struggles to contain what smell does effortlessly.

In Kashmir, winter is approaching again. The valley will soon be wrapped in the smell of kangris, haksuen, harissa and hammam smoke. For some, it’s warmth and comfort; for others, suffocation and stress. Smell divides us in experience, even when it unites us in recognition.

When the first snow falls in Kashmir, everything smells different. Quite cleaner, sharper and quieter. For a short time, it seems like the city is breathing differently. Again, smell brings us back to our senses.

We might forget names, faces and even voices, but not smells. The smell of a book, a sweater or a room where your childhood memories remain, stays with you like a conversation that isn’t over. So, don’t hurry past something that smells familiar the next time you smell it. Stop. Take a breath. Every smell lingers. It’s all there, looming in the air: someone you were, somewhere you valued, something you defaced.

Perhaps, the nose doesn’t have anything to do with smell. It’s about being alive, remembering, and making sense.