Govind Tekale
Recently the corpse flower bloomed after 13 years in Australia. It drew crowds as it smells like a dead body. But, despite the horrible smell, the people went to see and smell the flower. It shows the power of smelling. No wonder there is a pot of demand for scents throughout the world.
This fact is nicely explained in a book: “The Forgotten Sense: The New Science of Smell and the Extraordinary Power of the Nose”. It is written by Jonas Olofsson. Smelling is the easiest and most natural thing in the world. Experiences, emotions, memories and behaviours are created by the smelling. Yet, scent is sidelined in our age of sight and sound.
Jonas Olofsson says that humans are extraordinarily good at smelling. It’s contrary to popular belief. Humans are more sensitive to odour molecules than rats, bats or monkeys. Dog is the only animal who beats us in smelling.
When we smell, old memories are revived. Body odour is one of the strongest cause of disgust. That is why racism manifests itself in descriptions of body odour. The author draws attention to the fact that the sense of smell works by encompassing and taking cues from other senses.
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The sense of smell is an interface where the faculties of the Brain meet and collaborate. There is hope of training sense of smell for the millions who have lost their sense of smell after Covid. Emotions, life experiences and cultural conventions are processed by olfactory processes. The book shows the current limits of the science on smell.
Smell is also associated with our expectations. For example, an odd combination of innocuous things like vanilla ice cream with ketchup tends to repel us. Everyday life can be refined by an experiment like: if chocolate is your unhealthy craving, simply smell a teaspoonful of it wrapped in foil for five minutes and your brain can be desensitised and the urge for chocolate reduced.
According to the book, the sense of the smell is the most ancient. It is also perhaps the most refined of our senses. Olofsson suggests that most of us have a world of smells to discover.
In short, a remarkable book called: The Forgotten Sense: The New Science of Smell and the Extraordinary Power of the Nose by Jonas Olofsson points out that right under our noses, there is a very refined sense of smelling. It is the easy and also wonderfully complex and important. The smell revives our memories of past. The book is worth reading in original.
