AROMATHERAPY
Prompt - Aromatherapy : Write about scents you just absolutely love
I do not have a strong sense of smell. Or so my wife always tells me, and it's true that she often picks up scents that I haven't even noticed. Which means that when I do enjoy a particular smell it has to be one with a bit of oomph, that throws out a full nasal assault. And which, ideally, engages other senses as well.
Nature throws up a range of evocative aromas, and I can find pleasure in the heady freshness of a forest or the salty addictiveness of the sea. But most of my life is lived in the city, and it's the smells which cut through the general fug of the urban atmosphere that most excite. Some repel strongly - I quicken my pace when passing one of those Lush shops, the carbolic undertones bringing stinging reinders of school toilets. But the best smells are the ones that make me hungry, and two dominate my desires.
There's no aroma like a chippie aroma. Warm, greasy, with a hint of vinegar acidity and the background layer of fried fish and potato. Hard to resist, generating an immediate reaction of desire and memory and fingers to be licked. At it's very best when mingled with the aforementioned sea air.
But my ultimate perfume comes from a different kind of culinary establishment. For want of a better word I will use the blanket term Indian Restaurant. What I mean is any kitchen sending out, and drawing me in with, spices. Eastern spices, in many, many combination. My blanket takes in every kind of cuisine from the sub continent, and is, for the purposes of this essay, flexible enough to encompass the likes of Thai, Malayan and Vietnamese cooking, although there is nothing quite like the scent of fenugreek to bring on salivation.
You can have all the flowers and perfumes and air fresheners and scented soaps. Just give me the smell of a good curry...
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