The Devil is in the Dee-tails :)

a sensory board, because vision boards are so 2019

My friend, Mahira, handed me a birthday package last week. The kind with tissue paper that crinkles embarrassingly loudly and immediately gives away that something good is inside. Vanilla lip balm. A pistachio perfume, small and interesting, the kind you pick up at a concept store while pretending you’re not about to spend too much on it.

I opened the perfume first, obviously. And for about three seconds I just stood there. It didn’t smell like food, exactly. But it smelled like comfort. Like the idea of food in spring. A table set for people who actually want to be there, a kitchen that’s warm for good reason, a Sunday that has nowhere urgent to be. I couldn’t explain it and I didn’t try. I just thought: haan. yahi chahiye. more of this, please.

Which led me, as most things do, to a list. Not a vision board because I’m terrible at those, I always end up adding pictures of food and then getting hungry and abandoning the whole project somewhere between “career goals” and “aesthetic apartment.”

A sensory board, maybe. Mujhe nahi pata ki das saal baad ka vision kaisa dikhega. But I know, with unreasonable confidence, what I want it to smell like. Roughly. In pieces. Let me explain.

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I. what I currently smell like

The way some people just always have the same mug, the same corner of the sofa, the same order at a restaurant. Comfortable. Mine. I like it without being in love with it, which is, honestly, an accurate description of my relationship with a few things right now, but we don’t need to open all of those doors today.

Underneath the Gingham: paper. Always paper. I write everything down. Lists, thoughts that arrive at 11pm, the beginnings of sentences I intend to finish later and sometimes do. My bag at any given moment contains at least two notebooks, a highlighter that’s probably dried out but that I’m keeping anyway, and approximately seventeen things I meant to deal with last week. My life, at its current frequency, smells faintly of ink and intention and the particular busyness of someone who is figuring things out and writing it all down as she goes.

I like the paper smell. I just don’t want it to be the headline. Top note energy would be best, present for a beat, then something warmer moves in and takes over.

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II. the embarrassing inventory (and I am not apologising)

Before the aspirational stuff, can we talk about the smells that have absolutely no business making me feel the way they do? Because I think this is important. I think you can tell a lot about a person from the smells they love that they weren’t supposed to.

Petrol pumps. I grew up in the Middle East, and there is something about that warm-chemical smell and the little moment of stillness while the tank fills that sends me somewhere before I’ve even processed what’s happening. Not a memory, exactly. More like the feeling of a memory. Safe. Familiar. Ghar wali. I know this is not glamorous. I am telling you anyway.

Highlighters. The ones that smell faintly of artificial fruit and the very specific calm of a school exam you’re actually prepared for. Yellow ones are superior. I will not be elaborating.

New clothes, still unbroken-in, carrying that clean-detergent crispness that smells like potential. Like the outfit hasn’t made any mistakes yet. Naya naya sa — that particular freshness that feels almost optimistic, like the day is also still folded and uncrumpled and hasn’t committed to anything yet. Fresh laundry warm from the machine. The smell of a shop where everything is arranged so neatly that you briefly believe your life could be too.

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III. on luxury, and what it actually does to me

I have a cousin sister I’ve looked up to for as long as I can remember. The most aesthetic, put-together version of a woman I can imagine. Not in a distant, untouchable way. In a someday way. The kind of person whose outfits make sense, whose presence in a room you register before you fully see her, who seems to move through the world with a specific quiet confidence I have been, somewhat obsessively, studying since I was old enough to notice it.

She wore Bombshell. Victoria’s Secret, warm and a little heady, bold and wearable at once. And the first time I wore it, I felt more like her. Prettier, maybe. Like I had crossed some invisible line into a version of myself I was still growing into.

I keep rebuying it. I’ve gotten more compliments on it than almost anything else I wear. But the reason I keep going back isn’t the compliments, it’s that shift.

There’s also something in buying it for yourself, quietly, without waiting for a birthday. That small act and knowing ki main khud le sakti hoon is its own kind of pleasure. Not materialism exactly. More like: proof. Proof that you are building a life in which you can afford the things that make you feel most like yourself. One Bombshell at a time, and whatever comes next.

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IV. the smells that already belong to the life I want

Sunflowers and I’ll admit I’m not entirely sure sunflowers have a strong smell, not in the way roses insist on themselves. But I like the idea of them enough that I’m including them anyway. Yellow, tall, turning toward the light like they’ve simply decided that’s what they’re going to do. Unko koi convince nahi karna padta. That’s the smell: warmth, greenness, a room with sunlight before noon. Baby’s breath alongside them, because some things just belong in the same sentence.

Salt air. Not the postcard version. The real one, the kind that gets inside. The dampness of it, the brine, occasionally something mossy underneath if you’re close to rocks.

Mere naak mein paani ghus gaya tha on my twenty-third birthday, snorkeling, inhaling at exactly the wrong moment: very unglamorous, very funny, completely fine and even then, that smell. That recognition. Pockets full of sand, the tide doing whatever it wanted with me, people nearby eating good food and not particularly rushing anywhere. Salt air smells like a slower life. People spending time with each other on purpose. A day that has no agenda except to be a good day.

New book smell. Specifically new, not old. The first page, when the spine hasn’t bent and the story is entirely possible. That smell is optimism in paper form. I want a life that smells like things that are still ahead of me.

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V. the kitchen I’m building

The other smells are things I walk into. The kitchen is something I’m building, actively, in ways I won’t get into here but that keep me busy and excited in equal measure.

In the life I’m working toward, there is a kitchen. It smells like brunch time, not sharp early-morning, not heavy evening, specifically brunch, which is its own hour and its own register. The day has decided to be good about itself. There’s a chopping board sound, a blender somewhere, greenery that’s actually alive. On one side: something cold and summery, fruity, almost-a-drink-before-it’s-a-drink. On the other: something spiced and warm, a little smoke, a little heat. And underneath all of it, like a base note that’s been there since morning and isn’t going anywhere: cinnamon, coffee, chocolate.

Mere yaar jaante hain is kitchen ke baare mein. They’ve heard about it. Some of them will probably show up to it one day, eat something warm off a plate I’ve made, not fully realizing they’re sitting inside something I imagined for years before I built it. That’s the point. A kitchen that smells this way is not a kitchen for one. It’s for the kind of Sunday that becomes a story someone tells later.

I know this kitchen. I can smell it from here.

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VI. the smells that belong to people

Here is something I believe: the best smells aren’t smells at all. They’re just people, accumulated.

My mom has a smell. My closest friends have smells. The specific warmth of someone’s room you’ve spent enough time in, the particular scent of a hug from someone who knows you. These aren’t perfumes you could bottle or name. They’re just: safety. The smell of being known. Of someone who would recognize you in a dark room and you them, without needing to look.

I want my life to smell like that kind of comfort. Not one specific person but all of them, layered. The people I’ve memorized without realizing I was doing it. The ones whose presence smells like home even when you’re nowhere near one. Woh wali familiarity jo announce nahi karti khud ko jo bas hoti hai, underneath everything, making the rest of it make sense.

That’s the base note. The thing you can’t always identify but would notice immediately if it was gone.

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so.

Salt air that got indoors somehow. A kitchen that smells like cinnamon and people who wanted to come over. Gingham, for now, until something warmer takes over. Petrol pumps in warm countries, unapologetically. A Bombshell spritz at 7pm because you’re going somewhere worth going, because your cousin wore it first and some things you inherit on purpose, because main khud le sakti hoon and that is its own kind of joy. New leather. First pages. Fresh laundry. Sunflowers, whether or not they technically have a smell.

And underneath all of it, the base note, the thing that makes the whole composition hold, the smell of people who know you. My nose already knows what it’s looking for. It found a little bit of it in a birthday package: vanilla, pistachio, something small and interesting that smelled like comfort, like spring, like a table set for people who actually want to be there.

Sensory board: noted. Life: in progress.