Smell

‘Can’t you really feel the scent of it?’

Koli gestures denial.

‘Not even a bit?’

Koli feels disturbed. Anik seems to have developed this nuisance since the last few days. Disapprovingly she grimaces— “ why do you fancy that one would be hell-bent on smelling the odour of another ?”

And then she walked off in a huff. She has chores on hand.

 Prostrating himself, Anik continues to remain in the bed for a while. And then suddenly gets up and draws his palm near the nose to smell it intently. In fact, he prefers to remain clean & tiptop. His nails are neatly pared, nicely filed .Many a times fetid smell oozes out of the ring finger. Anik wears a coral ring . His mother had specifically made it for him at the time of his school leaving exams. He continues to wear it since then. Sometimes he is bothered by the thought of its benefit , if at all any, of wearing the ring but he could not remove it either . He could have removed it easily had his mother been alive. Despite his mother’s absence, he continues to wear it , like so many other things, in conformity with the rituals . Koli opines that the ring should , at times , be sanctified. But neither she nor Mr. Anik is aware of the ways & means of purification. 

 So ,year after year , the rings remain bonded to the body.  As if glued to  it . He is unsure whether the finger is to be cut to take it out ! Anik removed it somehow & found that the area covered under the ring has not only become discoloured like grass compressed under a brick but also has emaciated a bit too. He drew his finger near the nose to smell it. The odour it emitted seemed like a malodorous old pickle . Stinking , no doubt, but not similar to the smell exuding out of his own body. Anik inspected his own palm, fingers, and the nail-tops & was sanguine that the stench is not emanating out of his own hand. But the fold at the elbow and the armpit are the two areas that stink. Anik smelt those places deeply .Yeah! The elbow-pit is stinking . Anik does not use mosquito net . A ceiling fan above and a demonic pedestal rotate all through. Nightlong . Waking up, koli switches off  the pedestal and opens up the windows. The yet-to-be-autumn air carries the fragrance of Siuli. Hmm!, Anik is getting the whiff of Siuli even in this month of August .The Siuli tree in their garden, scantily though, is flowering round the year. The morning breeze is moist-laden , like the scent of the Suili, like the soft touch of granny . The air is not dewy that much. One is not sweating too. But, a fetid smell is emitting from Anik’s armpit. Alas !  this particular smell is not the same that Anik is getting all through.

 Suddenly, he remembered that the rear side of the ear also reeks because of its un-cleanliness. Anik starts rubbing the ear. First he rubs the right and then the left & brings forth the finger in an effort to fathom the smell. The rear sides of both the ears are giving out bad odour, but he could decipher a minute dissimilarity too between the two odour. The scent that he continues to ascertain do not seem to be the very smell either per se.

 Giving up ,Anik nose-dives into bed while his nose stuck to the bed-sheet . Many a times a smell, unconnected, persists ; lingers in the memory. Erringly, It is perceived to be one’s own body-odour. May be this very odour is coming out of the overnight bed .Like him, Koli too is finicky about cleanliness. The used-up bed-sheets are washed on a weekly basis , routinely, along with the pillow covers and towels., on Sundays, together they pull the mattresses, up to the terrace  for soaking it in the sun and habitually the pillows are placed on the window-sill, everyday, till they go out .

Sometimes, the duty of putting it in place devolves on him if koli turns oblivious of it . However, this is not binding  upon them that the pillows should be removed since the window panes are opening outwardly. But the pillows may get rain-soaked in the event of snappy shower. This has happened a few times. Those soggy ones  were replaced by unused preserved pairs . It is  not that easy to dry up a thoroughly drenched pillow within a day or two .

 He gets perturbed whenever he notices koli keeping the pillows on the window-sill. He shudders a bit thinking of the degree of photosynthesis that might be caused by the glaring sunny afternoon amidst the nocturnal sweating in the pillows . Anik prefers to be enamoured with the incense of Koli’s body filled with that chlorophyll. He has noticed that all her limbs do not emit the same fragrance, it differs. Her hair, the navel  and the private parts smell differently . The bosom evokes a different incense altogether. It preserves the shadow of yore like an old palatial porch. Damp a little, may be , somewhat briny, but when is history short of tears !

 what a surprise ! Anik could not sniff even a whiff of fragrance of her body plunging deep though into the pillow. Rather he was smelling a scent somewhat akin to what a moss laden wall of a dilapidated building emits . He contemplated that a bat would jump upon him, or demonic roaring laughter would rent him apart . But how could a bed-sheet washed on a weekly basis or the  pillows regularly soaked in sunlight emit such a fetid smell. Anik felt that the cot might be housed in a ramshackle building. Banyan roots have sprouted out of the cot, the lime & sand plaster is falling off the vase-structured bosom of Koli, and Anik is busy in removing the debris .So then, could the smell be the finality of their capitulation ? Anik remembered that he had read somewhere about the invisible miniscule insects called bedbugs crowd the sheets & mattresses that are the fountain-head of many a disease. He remains apprehensive whether their bed also contains any such lethal creepy-crawly over & above those bedbugs  !

 Oh no !, Lying prostrate for long , Anik concludes that the smell is not surfacing  out of the bed either ! Koli entered  the room at this point with tea in her hand . Things somehow do not speed up till the morning tea is gulped and she puts on the apron . She is then the other woman, galloping at breakneck speed, and forces  Anik to follow suit too. She leaves for duty earlier than Anik but continues to remind him of the  tit-bits till the last gasp. Even getting on to the rickshaw ,she is heard shouting out “ don’t forget to unplug the TV.’ Stepping into the metro even she never forgets to remind “ the food is cool by now, put it in the fridge “ . Anik feels relieved once she gets into the metro since Koli won’t get the tower at the moment. She won’t be able to pass on the last minute instructions , the dos & don’ts ! Perforce, she would plug herself into some music. Anik would forget everything . He would not unplug the TV, food won’t be placed in the refrigerator, the pillow would  continue to remain on the window-sill…

 Never! Anik never forgets everything, time and again. He misses bits & pieces but not everything. That’s why it is never fatal . At the point of entering the room with tea in hand Koli startled a bit the moment she found Anik sniffing the bed-sheet closely in a doggish posture. She didn’t get wild, rather felt awkward. It is Monday today. The week has just begun , It is a day destined to be bubbling with activity .Her routine chores to start now. At this hour Anik is busy smelling the bed-sheet ! She started feeling weary though decided to remain unperturbed  . Lovingly spreading out her arm on his back, She implored Anik,” finish up the tea “

Anik stared at her haughtily and asked “ when did you wash the sheets last ?”

Koli got exited. “how crazy ! Sunday only , just yesterday !  haven’t you washed a bunch in the machine ?

 Anik gets up, takes over the tea-cup, smells the flavour !

“What are you smelling ,dear ?’

‘Isn’t the flavour peculiar ?’

Koli retorts— ‘Why ?  have been consuming the same brand for the last three years’

Koli is attached to a school at quite a distance from Kalyani . She travels to Dumdum by metro ,then catches a local train to reach Kalyani. Thereafter boards an Auto to reach the school at 20-25 minutes far.  She only  purchases tea-leaves at Sealdah , while returning home.

Koli, would you sniff at my hair .

Busy in sipping tea , koli stares at him , though patiently finishes up the tea .Then reaches out to him  and draws Anik’s head to her bosom .implants her nose deep in his hair

‘Are you getting any smell?’

‘Yeah!, the smell of a tender cucumber’!

Anik reacts –“ you are being casual !’

Koli keeps mum. Anik feels a fetid smell emitting from the golden chain around her breast.

‘No ! even this too  is not the same’!

Seconds thereafter, Koli  throws in a remark –‘ god forbids!  the train should run as scheduled today . the hazard would persists till the pitribhumi local starts’ !

“that’s an issue raised since the general elections are round the corner “

‘Do you know, yesterday an accident happened when I was school-bound .the body had not been removed even ,till the time I was trudging back homewards !’

“Dry blood smells otherwise than a oozing fresh blood” .

Koli leaves the room collecting the empty cup & saucer.

 2

Jiben Sarkar is a retired local resident. His wife is bed-ridden being a rheumatic patient . Anik has never found him empty-handed . The old man is busy frequenting the market for a bunch of coriander leaves or for a piece of bread ,may be for a strip of medicine. Invariably ,he would start dialogue if he finds Anik by chance . He is unshaven & his sweating body sends out a fetid smell causing a bout of nausea in Anik .

 His body is emitting such a stench now. But do the smell reach anyone else ? Koli should have realised it though at nights when the intervening space between their physical frames is even less than a width of a thread. Koli might have pushed him aside if she had smelt something like this .Anik doubts that Koli might have sensed the odour but is behaving like an unconcerned: may be because of his masculinity or that she does not want to let him feel down in the dumps . He may not be the only earning member of the family, though, the connotation “ male” itself is enough for sustaining a lot of contradictions. Koli was applying perfume around her neck & other pulse-points. Like a decorated houseboat on the Dal-lake, she has draped herself in a see-through night-gown, cherishing Anik to be with her in her room.  Anik embraced koli from the back . He looked at the mirror while rubbing his nose against her shoulder. This also is a selfie—an instant interpolation . and such moments only hold the truth . Anik found her contracting the nose in the mirror. An insignificant vibration that may not be manifested in the Richter scale , but Anik could gauze it . He is flabbergasted . Instantly, he throttled her with the same hand with which he was playfully caressing her right  bosom.

Shaken up, koli asked— “What you are up to  ?”

“In the mirror, I noticed you contracting the nose the moment I touched you. So it’s clear you have sensed some foul smell. Why have you been lying through your teeth , for so long ?’

koli questioned in a choking voice— ‘Smell ?’

loosening the grip a bit to allow koli to reply , Anik thundered— ‘yeah! Didn’t you find my body stinking?’

‘This house is so old! I have been pleading with you since long to dispose it off . Every corner of it emits fetid smell . Mr. Hazra would offer you handsomely if you just tilt a bit. You know, rooms are still up for grab in Green view Tower @35 lakhs .’

‘This is not the smell of the building , Koli . This is emanating from my body . Something is rotting inside, may be  the  liver, the kidney  or any of the several other apparatuses inside the body ‘.

Koli removes the shackles of the hands like taking out a garland and turns back enigmatically

“Won’t it get rusted? you continue to live in shambles engrossed in outmoded thoughts, Let me find out where it has gone wrong, spoilt,. Let me inspect !’ Koli muttered nonchalantly and pulled the string off Anik’s pyjama.

 Right now, Anik is standing stripped before the mirror. Koli’s hands are slithering over his body like a serpent. Lowly muttering and striking with her nails, Koli draws near his mouth. Instantly, what a pong! Anik could smell it—Something has rotten , definitely! Anik could fathom it being inches away.

Translated by — Prabhat kumar Mukhopadhyay