the smell of popcorn

The smell of warm blood gushing from a lamb into the red creeks on the ground in the Muslim quarter of Benares, stray dogs praying in their own way, not for a thumbs up or a raise but for someone to peek or throw something. Keep an eye on them.

The smell of cremation in the ghats—one day I’ll tell you a lot about death in India that hasn’t been told anywhere—new ghee (clarified butter) smeared and the sound of an orchestra accompanied by thunder if the deceased is rich.

The smell of the first weekend sheets of my already divorced children who haven’t slept at home.

And the smell of the popcorn my father made when we were kids, and the effect of the cold. We already knew that if we’d seen rain on the other side of the school window, instead of running away from the storm or the possibility of a lightning strike when the bell rang, we’d be getting those two miles home at full throttle, because my dad would make popcorn. It would no longer be in the kitchen, feeding ourselves was one thing and interacting was another, but over time you realize that there is much more to it than we think, which is language. The reader will think he knows very well how popcorn smells, and I guarantee that no, it doesn’t. No matter what the movie theaters, the car at the mall entrance, or even the microwave at the supermarket, I still keep buying.

Leaving nothing in the hands of empty poetry, science says these are things of olfactory memory. Smell and emotions converge at one point in the limbic system to form the scent we perceive at a point that makes us alert, so we relive its entire context rather than remembering it. Or we miss. And we can do nothing to choose or predict what our mind will decide. Only what moves us achieves everlasting.

But since I prefer the latter by far between wars and letters, let me share an explanation that I understand much better. This memory of the senses, also known as the Proust Effect or the Proust Madeleine Effect, describes all the memories triggered from the first volumes of “In Search of Lost Time”, “By Swann’s Path”. The main character dips a freshly baked cake into a cup of tea while his mother once served him.

“Where could such a strong joy come from? I could see that it was related to the taste of tea and muffin, but it was much more than that and could not be of the same nature. Where did it come from and what did it mean? How to hold it? I have a second drink that tells me no more than the first; then the third, which is “It’s telling me a little less anyway. It’s time to stop, the virtue of the mix seems to be waning. It’s already clear that the truth I’m looking for is in me, not in him.”

How well the phrase “the truth I’m looking for is not in him, it’s in me” explains my father’s longing for popcorn! Who knows if it will make them in the pan? Sure, olive oil; that the corn comes from the ears of our own garden, or simply from the desire to have good memories of my father. Yes, it makes a lot of sense… Because my father wasn’t a bad person, definitely not, there are terrible parents. Parents who should be banned. In prison. until death. Mine repeated the experience of not knowing how to be otherwise. Because I also remember the smell of dirty water coming from the sink where I put my head that day because why I had to wash the dishes because I was the girl and not my brother. And while I was washing – of course I was washing! – I remember the anger rising in my chest and my brother used to call me the maid. And I remember that he never said my name, never spoke directly to me, but with that condescending “tell that bitch” who knows where he learned it from.

But if I could send him a question in the form of incense smoke… what I would like, I really want to know, is whether he associates cold and rain with popcorn because somewhere, all these conditions came together as a kid, or if he was the original inventor of this miracle, this Band-Aid for memories.