Smelling Death

Even simple organisms like worms are sensitive to the presence of death in their environment, and this awareness can alter their behavior, reproduction, and longevity. Reading this got me thinking about a smell that was an integral part of my childhood. I had an ailing grandfather who lived with my uncle's family in Kolkata. When we visited, I remember hesitating to walk into the room where he lived. There was a smell of sadness and decay there that I did not like. Time did not move there like it did in the rest of the world. It seemed to swirl around in a dankness, ever so slowly. He lived in that state for a long time, granted at that age my entire lifetime was shorter than the number of years that he had been ill. 

It was better to go into his room during the day when all the windows were opened, the smell dissipated a bit but it was never fully gone. There was real division between the threshold of that room and the rest of the house. You stepped in feeling one way and stepped out feeling another. He was remarkably cheerful considering his bed-ridden condition and tried to be part of our lives the best he could. I never felt that the smell was a representation of his mental state, it was a reflection of where he was on his passage to the end of his life. After his demise, the room felt integral to the rest of the house. It took a while for the remnants of that smell to die out.