The Smell of Memory

I have decided to rename my forthcoming novel-“The Onion Tears” as “The Smell of Memory”. But I am still a bit confused between the two. If the whole novel is analyzed, the second title suits it more but after all the initial title has its own value.

This novel is about a boy named Farhan who leaves his house after tenth class for higher studies. Although the novel starts from his eleventh class but it’s really about how he reaches his eleventh class from nursery classes. It tells about the affect of the incidences and memories in form of smells in his grown up life.

It is about the chaos of his mind, his friend Anees, his girl friend Yasmeen, his foe bitch.

It is about his feelings which started from his immature age till the semi mature one. It’s about the beggars, the markets, the books, the studies, the songs, the internet, the chatting and many more.

The following is an extract from one of the chapters of the novel.

The quarter dipped moon in his thoughts showered the donated light by sun on the fruity flowers, roaming rivers, tall trees, macho mountains and frenetic Farhan. The leaves smiled shyly, the flowers sung the song of desires, and the trees trembled with temptation. The air had variations in its smell and temperature. It had effect on Farhan’s nostalgic thoughts of the childhood days. Sometimes it smelled like rain on earth, sometimes like rain on leaves, sometimes like fog on flowers and sometimes like fog on smoke. It was sometimes cool, sometimes cold. It was sometimes damp, sometimes pleasant. Those smells and those feelings time travelled his brain to the past parodies. But that lasted for very less time. He went to the past and returned to the present.

Periodic pains & pleasures. Like sine cos curves.

Brain battered. With flashing memories.

Smells sucked. Through the hibernating nose.

Feelings frothed. When they fell in liquid emotions.

Sounds saturated. By the noise making thoughts.

Rain reverberated. Around the nature’s dryness.

Temperature twisted. In the isothermal space.

Sometimes they pained him profusely and sometimes they gained him happiness. The smell of the burning wood in the early mornings and the late evenings made him happy. The smell of the burning tires in night made him sad. The smell of the open sewer lines scared him with unknown fear. The sound of the blacksmith’s hammering on the red hot iron bar reminded him that now it was his turn. The sound of the crickets in night created more silence in the atmosphere. Who they called, he never understood. It was all black and blank. Brown smudge were distributed on the skin near his ankles. They were harder than the nearby wheatish skin. Sometimes he scratched them and could see pure red, like ruby, the red part of himself. He always thought not do that again but he did it repeatedly.

The smell of the rotten wood logging in water. The smell of the water with rotten wood. Succumbing stems, lusterless leaves, bleating branches and tranquilized trees under water. Lay lifeless, decomposing, dying, crying without noises under the breezing rain. The smell of the fresh wood cut by saw. The smell of the gradually decomposing coiled up wood chips born from wood planer. Sometimes they rolled due to slight breeze in search of their original parent woods. The smell of the wood powder. A layer of soft puffed wood powder on wet soil. The smell of the wet soil under which the dead insects lay buried without coffin. The green grass hoppers converting to brown bugs and then to black burials. The ants tried to carry them away to their dining tables but failed to free it from the grips of soiled deaths. The smell of the green to greener & greener to greenish leaves soaked with water. The smell of some old thoughts and the scare of those smells. Those old thoughts swelled inside his nose & made their permanent place inside his brain in the form of smells. Smells in the form of memories and memories in the form of smells. Different smell for different memories. Thoughtful memories. Memorable thoughts. They were hidden, sleeping which were activated by the smell outside the body. Outside smells attracted the inside smells. Like a magnet. Like a North Pole attracts the South Pole. Like a horse pulls the carriage. Like a sea carries the sand. Like a snail carries his shell. Like a breeze carrying the rain and rain carrying the breeze. Like hydrogen carrying the oxygen in a water molecule. Like a lub carrying the dub of the heart. Like an electrostatic force. Like Newton’s law of gravitation. Sometimes they hit the dead memories so hard that his whole body shivered undulated.

Dreamy disorders. Dwindled his peace of mind.

Doubtful breaths. Smelled like shit mixed with scents.

Everything faded like a night fades the evening and the evening fades the morning.

Farhan could feel an invisible drop of moisture on the tip of his fingers. It extracted the heat out of his fingers and evaporated in the air. Like this a number of drops covered his whole body and gave him the feeling of numbness and cold.

Everything froze.

Like an ice, which melted, deformed, froze and reformed again.