Has a certain smell ever taken you on a trip down memory lane? Like the smell of chlorine when you go to the pool after a long time, takes you back to 4th grade when you started going for swimming lessons? Or the smell of a soap or body wash brand that you haven’t used in a while triggers a flashback of a phase in your life from 3 years ago. Or even the smell of yippee noodles, reminding us of pressing the play button to the round noodles advertisement from when we were children.
Has a particular taste reminded you of a specific person? The taste of black filter coffee always reminds me of my best friend and our 4 am sunrise and coffee escapades. The taste of chocolate ice cream reminds me of my father because he always hated how I picked the most generic ice cream flavor after hours of contemplating which one to get. The first bite I take of a simple podi dosa reminds me of my grandmother and how she’d make dosas for me without any hesitation whenever I asked. And whenever I see an Alfredo pasta, my younger sister’s face pops into my head, the Alfredo being her constant favorite.
Have you ever wondered about the word sonder- how you’re the extra in someone else’s plot? Like that one kid from your high school who you’ve interacted with once, maybe twice, has also in her own story interacted with you once, maybe twice? It seems painfully stupid now that I say it out loud, but it is elegant in its own way.
It’s so nice to think that your senses have memory too- memories you’d normally forget, but they remember. Till date, every time I clean the kitchen after cooking a meal, I subconsciously sing the clean-up song I was taught as a toddler (clean up clean up everybody everywhere, clean up clean up everybody do your share). If you ask me to sing it randomly, I might not even know what you’re talking about but somehow learning that song to clean up is still one of my earliest memories.
Sometimes these subconscious memory attacks end up becoming the highlight of my day. It leaves me with a warm and fuzzy feeling, to remember the days gone by with such fondness, and suddenly you’re captivated by the urge to turn back time and live your life the same way all over again. The highs, the lows, the ups and downs, all of it- just so you can come back to this point and have that fuzzy feeling consume you once more.
It’s our last trimester of the year, and for some of us it’s our last trimester as undergraduate college students. As much as we crib about Krea (as we should too), there are so many memories from our time here that leave us with that same feeling of warmth – so many memories that will continue to do so for the rest of our lives. The smell of cup noodles, or ramen, or the taste of potatoes and dry rotis- these might all come back to you as fond memories even if the moment itself wasn’t received with fondness. So for another month, work at making memories (and improving your gpa please) and make those that will leave you with that all-consuming fuzzy feeling ten, fifteen, twenty or even fifty years from today.