Scent-sation

Mumbai smelled as strong as the working hands of the laborers in the Dharavi slum. 

Tardeo smelled like white fish and coconut the Parsis cooked for Navroze to welcome in Spring. Their lunch stood in opposition to the stench of hot piss that fried in the shimmying sun. 

Mahim smelled like wreckage, the decay of buildings that had become disabled from the years of monsoon and mother nature’s brutal fist. 

Panchgani smelled sweet and salty from the pani puri dhabas. School children in plaid skirts cracked the fried bread between their molars.

When Riya went home to her apartment in Bandra, her room smelled like sandalwood. Musky and earthy, the scent was a remedy to the heavy hands of urban culture and concrete outside. Sandalwood calmed and soothed her sense and wrapped her in a thoughtless space where Mumbai and its stressors dissipated into a curl of smoke. 

Riya wished to sit under a Santalum tree under its fibrous green leaves and breathe its sandalwood in. How simple life could be sitting under this happy smelling tree. Maybe a grey jungle fowl would sing speak. Maybe a tiger with stripes in its yellow eyes would pass by and give Riya a wink. 

In Mumbai, clouds of black spurred out of the backs of motorbikes in tufts of toxicity. The air had a thick yellow smog that hung over the Arabian sea. The men smoked beedies and the beggars dumped their toilet bowls into the alleys.

How peaceful it would be to live under a Santalum tree, to return to the sweet earth and abandon the horrid smell of man.