Friday Thoughts: Gratitude to the Common Jasmine

[This is post is an entry to Godrej’s  #InspireAFragrance contest on Indiblogger]

My memories are laden with jasmine flowers. Nothing uplifts the spirit as the sight and smell of jasmine. Gratitude to you, my fragrant friend. Now you, my reader, will say—“oh, that jasmine that we often see in roadside flower shops?” and then shrug your shoulders to a silent dismissal.  Sometimes, we do not realize how a common fragrance crochets into life moments.

Like in a crowded bus, holding to the bus railing, swinging against other bodies and bouncing over road bumps, how the smell of jasmine flowers on a woman’s hair eases and calms and opens.

And on long train journeys, when the stench of urine spreads from the toilets into the compartment, when food odours settle into unwashed clothes, and the salt of your perspiration mingles the tiredness of your being, how a string of jasmine flowers freshens and cools.

Like how a flower-seller selling jasmine familiarizes, anchors and stabilizes strangeness in a new city or town. And how we travel culture through the variety of jasmine that is available and how they are strung—some close, some spread apart, some mixed with leaves and other colour flowers. And how each jasmine variety looks and smells different—the slightly purple ones with faint smell, the stout round ones with wholesome fragrance, the tiny ones with lilting fragrance, the slightly long ones with sharp wild smells.

And how we go past class barriers, when upon smelling a homegrown jasmine string on a domestic help’s hair, she turns proudly and says—“You like it? They grow in my home. I will bring you a string tomorrow.”

And how we make new friends. I sniff the air and say—“Someone is wearing jasmine.” She turns around and says—“Oh! Did you smell my handbag? I had spilled a bottle of jasmine fragrance some months back.” I smell her bag and then we talk.

And how an abundance of jasmine flowers announces there is a celebration. A celebration of love. A celebration of devotion. A celebration of success. Sometimes even a celebration of a life well-lived.

When I missed jasmine for years, during my stay outside India, I tried to befriend her friends-- honeysuckle and lilac. They smelt and looked different and yet, when their fragrance erupted in the air in gentle spurts, how they reminded me of the Indian her.

How they took me back to my mom’s terrace, smelling her blooming jasmine and letting the pain within adrift. How vulnerable they looked and yet how defiant their fragrance!

And how they reminded me of my childhood, walking with Dad through Lake Market in Kolkata, stopping at the many flower-sellers selling jasmine. I return, in my mind, to those shops again and again. I return to the days when the joy of seeing flowers was enough.

And when I shrivel into dark corridors and silence overwhelms, how a string of jasmine flowers sits with me like a girlfriend, whispering new dreams.

And you say, “Oh, jasmine?” and shrug your shoulders. If you only knew. If you only knew how a common fragrance can crotchet life into our lives.

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