Places

What do you remember of the old house?
The smell of it.
How did it smell?
I could find the old house by my impressions of it, even if contributed only by the perceptions of my nose and the storage corners of my mind. It's like they have assumed corners, and the odors have been neatly shelved- The smell from the kitchen grasping the dining area like in an aged, frail fist, while the kitchen smelled of mom (or was it mom who smelled of it before she'd wash away the clues of that lilting quality of clove and cardamom from her fingertips?). The smell of each of the bedrooms- smelling of it's owner- in rebellion, fiercely independent- of her very own separate dreams in a house meant to be a collective cloud. The store room- smelling like a heavy heart . The washroom- a strange cocktail of everyone's favorite toiletries.The smell of the terrace wild with the home-grown lilies, lazy breath of button roses and the sticky balm secretly emanating from the money-plant. The porch, always, inebriated. How the odors of the drawing room never remained the same- That was the only area frankly deceptive and confusing. Only that confused me of home.