“Sometimes a certain smell will take me back to when I was young
How come I’m never able to identify where it’s coming from?
I’d make a candle out of it if I ever found it
Try to sell it, never sell out of it, I’d probably only sell one”-Stressed Out (Song by twenty-one pilots)
“Ah Scheiße! It’s raining again.”
I hate rain.
Always have. Ever since I was a kid. The logical part of my kid-brain knew that in a country like mine rain was important (obviously because otherwise, I wouldn’t get mangoes). But I hated the puddles, the muck, the water that went into my black school shoes and soaked my white socks that I would have to wear for the rest of the school-day.
I still hate rain that makes me wear a crappy windcheater, turns my umbrella into a bowl and I hate the way the drops stay on my glasses, making me wish someone invented tiny (but classy) car-wipers for them. Ugh.
Here, they are sick of this weather too. This weather that changes every fifteen minutes. And are all waiting for summer, which doesn’t look like it is showing up anytime soon. April is especially infamous for being fickle like that. But today it is different. Looking out the window, I see that it’s all gray skies, this dreary Friday afternoon.
They all eventually leave me alone here. Went to their office or gone home early. I am alone in lab. ‘Piyu Bole’ plays softly in the background. I wrap up the task at hand. It’s time for a coffee break. I walk out in the supposed “rain”. It’s a slight drizzle at best. Dampening people’s plans. And then it hits me. Petrichor. The one thing that I absolutely love about the rain. And then everything seems pretty. I think, it always rains ‘pretty’ here. Just drizzles of various intensities. And almost always, it is preceded by sunshine. Hence, the fragrance. Every rainy day is ‘petrichor day’. No downpours. Every time reminds me of first monsoon showers, and I am reminded of home. Just working on a lazy rainy day, or reading a book with a piping hot coffee, while raindrops softly hit the glass window. This, I decide, would be one of my fragrances.
Once in a café, when I was complaining about something I hate (knowing me, probably white chocolate) my friend said something along the lines of, “You know, you can hate something without making it your whole personality. Just shut up.” I’m fairly sure she said that because I was ruining her experience. But I will give her credit for knowing me better. She’s wise like that.
I think I did this with rain. Just put it in the drawer labelled ‘Things I hate’, and never bothered to check the other things that accidentally went along with it. And while I made it my personality to hate the rain, weirdly, it is what is bringing me close to home. Guess, I’ll take whatever I can get.
-d.s.s.
PS. I don’t think white chocolate is ever coming out the drawer.