Nose to the Ground!

I was recently reminded how sterile our lives have become, going from one air-conditioned environ to another. Never touching life if we can, never really tasting or feeling or being in it.

I recently changed jobs and the new office is 35 km away from home, which makes it a bit of a trek to get there and back. 70 km a day, through Bangalore traffic is incentive enough to dust down the motorbike that I bought 3 years ago (in a moment of mid-life madness and then promptly parked with a cover on it) and swap it for the car.

All of last week I made the commute on the bike and it was the most liberating experience ever. (For those of you who don’t know, bikes were my first love when it came to vehicles.) I always thought driving was like a video game and riding was the real thing. On a bike you actually felt everything, every bump, the wind, the speed…everything.

So anyway, one day last week I was riding home and I was suddenly aware. More aware than I had been in years and the one sense that overtook every other was the smell. I realized that I was being bombarded with an amazing smorgasbord of scents. Scents that I had forgotten even existed, scents that brought associations with them that I hadn’t even thought of in years.

All this time my commute was made in a car, windows rolled up, aircon filling the space with cool, clean, dust free air. Breathing an atmosphere that was devoid of the flavours of the world I lived in but never touched. I became accustomed to this safe little bubble that separated me from the reality of the city I live in and it was a comfort that I was unwilling to relinquish.

Well – now I am more than happy to let that go and experience what I did that day – every day. That moment of awareness began with the fragrance of fresh baked bread and biscuits. A bakery by the side of the road, playing host to the office crowd, fresh from work and catching a quick coffee or ‘chai’ with baked goods before wrapping up for the day. Images of college mates and skipping class to get a slice of cake or ‘masala bread’ at the bakery on the corner flooded my mind. I have to admit I was surprised at the strength and vividness of the memories that were evoked just by a whiff of butter and vanilla.

 Mind full of happy thoughts I rode on, only to be taken on a real journey all the way home. The smells of kebabs from an eatery on the ring road, reminiscent of the shawarma rolls we grabbed as working dinner when doing graveyard shifts, the acrid smell of burning rubber from the drag meets that I snuck out to take part in, on borrowed wheels, the sweet scent of wood smoke, coming from a settlement of transient construction workers perhaps cooking dinner a poignant reminder of my grandmother’s wood fired stove. Each odour a reminder of a specific time and place, and bringing with it emotions long forgotten.

It didn’t end there though. There was more to come, from a whiff of eucalyptus smoke to a smelly drain, an incense factory and even just the cold, clean smell of the air, where the city ended and traffic gave way to clear air.

That day I got home feeling happier and with more positive energy than I had in the last few years. Suddenly nothing was insurmountable, no stress too hard to handle. It’s true what they say…biking really does free your soul.