The Loss of Smells

The trains are old and musty and creaky. Every morning a thousand people gather on platforms across the city to take the train to go to work, go back home, sell their wares, and try and educate themselves. She would stand in the midst of the huge throngs of people, at the place designated for the arrival of the ladies compartment, waiting for the 7:50 Chengalpet train. Earphones plugged in and the radio playing movie songs, she felt like she soaked in the city best during times like these. The smells, the sounds, the melodious flow of Tamil all around- she never regretted making the decision to move from small town Kerala to the huge ‘metropolitan’ Chennai. In fact, she felt at home more than anywhere else- no weird stares, no groping in buses, the ability to get out and walk in the streets without being judged by neighbours and family. Most of all, she loved the trains, the old yellow and faded red trains. The crowds, the jostling, the smell of jasmines being thrust into her face, the joyous chatter, the fresh stains of turmeric on the grooves of the earlobes and the pleasant smell of idly floating from an open tiffin box of the morning commute and the rustle of the plastic covers holding wet vegetables, the withered jasmines a mere memory of their morning bloom, dull, sullen, oily faces and sweaty armpits of the evenings. She took all this in as a reward for the life she chose and the one that she chose to ran away from. Even the smell of the river turned open sewer just before Saidapet station was a welcome sign: the fact that she could recognise the station with just the smell was proof that Chennai was indeed in her blood now. How a train commute to work could give one a sense of belonging to the city was something that she never pondered about before. Now, every Saturday evening, when she squeezed herself between the legs of the seated women to make way for people with huge shopping bags from Mambalam, she understood what it was to feel a city. When she would overhear a college girl laughing into the phone shyly or when the girl would look through her notes leaning on the rails of the window, she knew what the teenager was feeling. When the blind singer and his blind wife got into the train at Nungambakkam and sang gospels in Tamil, she knew exactly how many women would reach into their handbags and drop coins into the steel bowl, within which loose change kept a chaotic rhythm. She could detect the arrival of the biscuit seller the instant the thick smell of cooked butter hung in the compartment. She knew from the strains in the cry of the flower seller that all the latter wanted to do was sell the last couple of measures of jasmines at whatever rate she could get and head back home. She would look into the hollow eyes of the married women around her and imagine them in their houses- in their nighties, hurrying between the kitchen and the bedroom to cook and check their children’s homework, while their husbands watched TV and complained of a stressful day at work. Did they still make love, she wondered, would they have the same hollow stares that they have now, if their husbands would still think them attractive and make love to them? She laughed at herself. Even appearances somehow were indented to please the menfolk. At the platform of her station, she walked to ticket counter and bought a ticket to Tambaram. She pushed the yellow card into the depths of her handbag, saving it as a surprise for herself for the future. Her last journey along Chetpet- Chrompet stretch was over, as was her career in her beloved Madras. Next week, she would travel in the Delhi Metro- no more smells of Saidapet, no more flower sellers, just air-conditioned coaches and a crumbled yellow ticket printed in Tamil and English waiting to be discovered.