Attraction of Fragrance

Attraction of Fragrance
(Vinod Anand)

There are some words we find beautiful in and of themselves; take ‘ephemeral’. It sounds good rolled around your lips, tongue and mouth, and to me it also looks good written. Its meaning, too, is hauntingly lovely—lasting for a markedly brief time. We get it from the Greek ephemeros ‘lasting a day’.

It isn’t any wonder then that the words ‘ephemeral’ and ‘beauty’ often go together. The first day it began to rain, we were treated to the indefinable scent of water soaking into the parched earth.

This is a gift of the first rains. After that— it’s gone. There is word for this fragrance — petrichor, constructed from the Greek petra, meaning stone and ichor, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology. What happens is that oil exuded by certain plants during dry periods is absorbed by clay-based soils and rocks.

With rain, this is released into the air, along with geosmin, a metabolic by-product of bacteria, producing that subtle yet heady scent. Another ephemeral sensory de light is the experience of walking through fields of bluebells in England. The best time to see them is in late April and May, though some will flower earlier or later depending on their location and local climate.

The ‘bluebell season’ is all too brief. People wait for it; there is even a national ‘watch’ with sightings in various places being reported in the news. Bluebells are predominantly found in ancient woodlands that have at least a small area in which they lie dormant for most of the year before suddenly flowering in spring.

What is magical is that one day you might be walking through a green landscape and the next there appear swathes of delicate vivid blue flowers. There is something truly enchanting about stepping into a bluebell wood. As sun light flickers through the trees, the fragile flowers are dappled in light—a dreamy haze of blues, that reveal different shades of the colour in the changing light, and also as they grow older.

The same patch looks differently hued each day you visit. No wonder bluebells are associated with wonderment and fairytales and folklore. Then we have hanami, the Japanese traditional custom of making time to enjoy the beauty of sakura or cherry blossom. From the end of March to early May, sakura bloom all over Japan, and are the stuff of postcards and calendar pictures and posters.

Yet, beautiful as they are, the pictures really do not do justice to the experience. The gentle fragrant smell, the contrast of pink-white blossoms with dark branches, the movement in slight breeze—all these together make hanami a memorable experience. Each year, the blossom forecast is announced by the weather bureau, and is followed carefully as the blossoms only last a week or two. These flowers are not only short-lived, but so fragile that alight spring rain can easily cause the petals to drop.

Even at the end, when the petals all fall off, it is still a beautiful scene, like very light pink snowflakes covering the ground. The cherry blossom is treasured not only for its beauty, but for the enduring metaphor of the ephemeral nature of life that they represent.

This concept is known as ‘mono no aware’, translated as ‘the pathos of things’, and is the Japanese term used to describe impermanence. Within it is the idea that in the transience of all things exists a gentle sadness in its eventual passing, and it is this awareness of impermanence that can heighten for us the appreciation of its beauty.