He smelled trouble coming. It may have been an old cliché, but he knew trouble smelled. Could he help being gifted with extraordinarily sensitive olfactory nerves? Or whatever the hell they were when nerves weren’t at home?
He would get a whiff of trouble brewing a few days, often a few moments, before the excreta hit the rapidly-whirring-electrical-device-with-three-blades-mounted-on-the-ceiling. The resultant effects of such an action need only be imagined rather than experienced, for a shudder of scatological intensity to shake his bones.
When he got a whiff it was usually like the smell that wafts up to the nostrils after sweaty socks have been tugged off after being encased all day in too-tight cheap leather shoes with plastic moulded soles. Just there, hovering like an unwanted, blinking-amber caution light when you’re speeding down the crossroads at night. The warning whiff was usually considered and discarded, yet remaining there at the edge of his consciousness like a long unsold magazine at the bottom of the newsagent’s shelf. And he’d done that too often, never heeding the warning of the whiff till it was too late.
This time he waited for stronger smells. Blinking amber to change to angry flashing red. Trouble never smelled the same every time. It was only the warning whiffs which were a constant. And if you were not a bit obsessive-compulsive about hygiene, didn’t change your socks thrice a day, were sweaty all over while clad in polyester, you would never really know the difference between the whiff and your body odour, till the night soil hit you in the face after rebounding off suspended, rotating electrical gadgetry. Then you would really know the difference.
Fortunately, he’d never reached that excruciating level of suffering. He’d watched others less blessed than him, without his advantage of fore-scent, wade through dung, never really reaching solid ground, as he nimbly sidestepped the mess and passed on to safety.
Trouble came in all sorts of scents, aromas and odours. It was important to distinguish between smells to understand the trouble that must be avoided. When he smelled scents, he smelled woman trouble. These scents were as often as not preceded by warning whiffs which was a bother. Fruity, floral, mildly spicy scents which caused havoc with his hormones and testosterones, and did nothing really to mask the subtle, delicate, underlying odour of feminine perspiration for which they were intended in the first place, spelled trouble for him. That is why scents featured on top of his list. His only defence against those particular fragrances was to douse himself in musky aftershave lotions and deodorant. His strategy hadn’t won him even a battle in the war of the sexes, but it stayed as top priority for trouble to be avoided despite sure failure. On the other hand, and with all things considered, he may have actually been at an advantage in the war.
A baked potato, diced and slobbered with butter melting down its jacket. Scrambled eggs, or a fluffy cheese omelette cooking. Smoked pork simmering over a gently burning wood fire, in a thick gravy of herbs and spices. Fine, long-grain rice bubbling in a rich soup of creamy milk, nuts, cinnamon and clove, sweetened with the winter’s fresh new jaggery. The breathtaking, but rancid aroma of home-brewed spirits which once partaken of, jangled the senses in a deliciously unpredictable, but joyful way. Aromas were like flavours, only you could smell them. Such aromas were trouble when he over-indulged. When he ignored the known stench of intestinal gases much before they were expelled hither and aft. But he also hated the slimy stink of bile that rose in his throat when he abstained.
There was another aroma that caused over-indulgence too. It had nothing to do with food as such, or perhaps it could well be termed the food of love, and it was trouble only after it happened, not something entirely avoidable. This aroma of trouble was a consequence of weakly failing in trying to avoid the trouble that fruit and flower laden scents brought in their wake.
It was the aroma of perspiring bodies, recently exercised in the conjoined pleasures of the flesh; sated with the aspired for emissions and secretions which distinctly smelled somewhere between a scent and an odour; and which left him wanting in excess.
These were some of the scents and aromas which assailed him. He bluntly confessed to himself that he had no possible tactical defence against them, other than to have a steely resolve not to fall prey to them yet again. And it is why he felt the need to classify smells, in an anal sort of way, so to speak.
Aah, but odours, those were something else. These smells he could handle confidently. They were redolent of trouble that happened because of incompetence around him. For instance, an accident involving vehicles always smelled of burning rubber. The odour of war and strife was not so much cordite and gunpowder, but rather the reek of nervous authorities doublespeaking about reasons to continue the fighting. The smell of decaying flesh would inform him that trouble in police uniform was in progress. Odours had also been classified by him into three sub-genres: putrid, funky and pungent. The last named was the least harmful in comparison. This sub-classified smell was similar to sun-baked red chillies used generously in cooking he would proceed to eat without adequate warning from the chef.
Putrid is the odour of war, crime, politicians, money, fundamentalism, bigotry, ad nauseam. Funky is the smell of garbage rotting, of unburned fossil fuel from a combustion engine, the malodour of cruel intent by a cheating lover. All these odours were invariably preceded by the warning whiff of smelly, desocked feet. His way of avoiding putrid odours was to be as uninvolved as possible; to be in a zen state. Funky odours were treated by handkerchiefs pressed to nose, and a certain ‘ignorance-is-bliss’ attitude. If you ignore it with vehemence, it will go away. Pungent odours were often troublesome in themselves. They smelled just right at times, and then they metamorphosed into the proverbial shit.
Smelling it like it is was an acquired skill, a developing art form, a candle in the dark for the strategy-deficient, a tool for survival. He wondered why people never paid sufficient attention to smells. They would always walk past with fingers pinching noses, oblivious to the warning bells, and then when trouble came and smacked them silly they would look to justify why they hadn’t seen it coming. Had they but heeded warning whiffs they would be all right and not reeling from shock every time. He had not failed to notice that there never was a warning for the advent of incompetent people who were in no way disabled or handicapped. The warning he got was for the potential trouble such people could cause. He wished he could somehow figure out how to be warned of these folks themselves when they entered his life.
He wondered what their identifying smell would be. Dead flowers? No, too good for them. A fish market? A public urinal? Better. But now that he could smell trouble coming he concentrated his exteroceptive powers and tried to determine the nature of the smell.
It was not yet strong, though calling it mild might be understating it. It did not yet seem to possess an identifiable pong. He sniffed with the protruberating appendage that mounted his face like a mischievous whim of his Creator, which if truth be told, it was. It seemed to operate on its own, because his face held a calmness and passivity that did not reveal his emotions. The Nose, as he called it affectionately, and as he was referred to by others behind his back (though they would have been surprised to know that he would actually have appreciated the nickname), lifted itself like the snout of a wolf and made a lengthy inquiry of the air around him. He still could not define it as an odour, fragrance or aroma. This worried him. It probably meant that trouble would strike at the last moment. The warning whiff had come for a few seconds, but did not prolong its visit as it normally would have, leaving him feeling a tad frustrated.
These abnormalities in his smell sense did not make him happy either. It was important to know the nature of the smell to decide his defence strategy. He hoped it would not be a fragrance. The male-female equations had been particularly daunting of late. On the other hand, he had been without a woman for a long time… Passing scents on the street, straying scents in public transport not intended for him, made him feel edgy. Libidinous. The only defence he could think of right now was to stock up on condoms.
He decided he would give preference to aromas which presaged the full satisfaction of his not inconsiderable appetite. He was quite keen about garden-fresh cauliflower lightly stir-fried in salted butter this season, sprinkled with crushed cloves of burnt garlic, an aroma as heavenly as they come, a crispy charred tongue-drooling flavour to die for. Such a defence mechanism was ideal, requiring no strategy whatsoever, merely the inclination to submit.
The only work left for him now was to shore up on defenses for odours. And their sub-genres. Not an easy task and perhaps the most dangerous of all troubles. Odours were unfriendly and obdurate. While he possessed the basic human instinct for survival, he lacked the acute natural instincts of aggressive animals. Attack being the best form of defence was not always a sensible maxim to follow. Often retreat, and even total escape (with plastic surgery and a relocated new identity) were preferable means of surviving. But it had yet to come to that. So far…
Walls have a way of just being there. Immutable, impervious. You never notice them. One only refers to them as symbolic of imprisonment or privacy. Their presence goes unacknowledged except when it comes to having them papered or painted. Then the burning issue is about whether the pink and gold Fleur-de-lis pattern is more suitable than the lavender hue given in the shade card. Walls are considered for their level of dampness, their thickness, their ability to carry wires and fittings, whether they are built of brick, concrete or plastered-over wood, and not much else. In the dark, walls do not exist as physical entities, rather they are sensed. By touch of course. Walls don’t smell. At least not the ones he had around him.
The Nose wavered in its findings. The smell was intense but completely undefinable. Not a scent, aroma or odour entered his nostrils, yet he knew there was a smell. He turned around slowly on his heels, pivoting to allow The Nose to sweep its environs more closely. He was avoiding switching a light on since he did not actually want to see trouble. Smelling it was quite enough, thank you. Not being able to determine the nature of the smell was leading to minor panic buttons being pressed in his sensory systems. He pivoted faster, and then making a random halt he began to pace about. The Nose sniffed and snuffled. The hairs in his nostrils tautened, electrified as filters, and he increased his strides. In the dark, measurements fell away, and he was led by The Nose smelling something that seemed not to be there. Till he smashed face-on to a wall, still naked in its new coat of plaster, awaiting his final decision of paper or paint. He never saw lights nor stars, heard bells or thuds. Just a blackness, darker than the dark he was in, overcame him.
He awoke in a hospital bed with a grinding pain in the head and The Nose swathed in bandage. He fell back into darkness. Days later, The Nose having been unbandaged, he sniffed and snuffled for all he was worth, but could smell nothing. The doctor told him as much. His smashing into the wall face first had caused irrevocable damage to his sense of smell. He would have to live without olfactory sense from now on. Plus the results of a surgery that had bent The Nose a-kilter.
Supine on the hospital bed he wondered at the doctor’s choice of tiger skin patterned briefs and the piercings in his navel and his penis. He was glad to see the nurse, quite a pretty little thing, wore sensible underwear even if it were slightly stained at the crotch. And as he regretted his inability to smell all the scents she had and the fragrance she wore, he gazed through the walls of the hospital room, seeing the termites in the cheap woodwork, and the patients tethered to their monitors and intravenous tubing in the Intensive Care Unit next door, and he smiled.
Now he would be able to see trouble coming.
