Contemplating the Perfumed Breasts...With a Dab of Petrol

Tilar J. Mazzeo, ‘The Secret of Chanel No. 5’, 2010:

“...St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who founded the Cistercian movement, made a point of encouraging his monks to give perfume and anointment a central role in prayer and in rituals of purification. In his famous sermons on the Bible’s “Song of Songs,” some of the most erotic verses anywhere in religious literature, he advised devout clerics to spend some spiritual time contemplating the perfumed breasts of the young bride described in the song’s key passages...”
 

Lizzie Ostrom, 'Perfume: A Cenury of Scents', 2015:

“...But perfume? A bit trivial, isn’t it? What could it possibly have to say?

We are told that olfaction is the magic key to unlocking memory, and sometimes we do have a vivid picture connected to a particular smell. If we are lucky, it might be from an idyllic moment in childhood, when we had our own treehouse and hosted a tea party for the squirrels; if we are unlucky, it could be the classroom at school where we got thumped. But more often when we smell something not quite familiar, catching a whiff off another person’s coat, it is as though we have been kidnapped and taken to a remote landscape. Blindfolded, disoriented, we sense something of the place but are unable to distinguish exactly where we are. There is that frustrating feeling of recognising a smell, of knowing we know it, but being completely flummoxed as to its identity. After a friend tells us ‘that’s Paco Rabanne’ and puts us out of our misery, there is that moment of relief. The Rubik’s Cube is solved! All is well with the world. When fragrance more often than not renders us dumb, how are we supposed to start articulating its important role in our history?...”

Courtney Humphries, The Boston Globe, July 17 2011:

“Think of some of your most powerful memories, and there’s likely a smell attached: the aroma of suntan lotion at the beach, the sharpness of freshly mown grass, the floral trail of your mother’s perfume. “Scents are very much linked to memory,” says perfumer Christophe Laudamiel. “They are linked to remembering the past but also learning from experiences.”

But despite its primacy in our lives, our sense of smell is often overlooked when we record our history. We tend to connect with the past visually - we look at objects displayed in a museum, photographs in a documentary, the writing in a manuscript. Sometimes we might hear a vintage speech, or touch an ancient artifact and imagine what it was like to use it. But our knowledge of the past is almost completely deodorized.

“It seems remarkable to me that we live in the world where we have all the senses to navigate it, yet somehow we assume that the past was scrubbed of smells,” says sensory historian Mark Smith...”

There were no auto-rickshaws  in Miraj until mid 1970's or so. Tonga was the vehicle of transport. But Kolhapur, where our favorite aunt lived, had them.

So even today petrol smell brings back ' idyllic moment in childhood' when we visited Tai-mavashi. (There are many such smells now lost to me almost permanently.)

This is how Karen Abbott describes prostitutes in Chicago in 1905:

"...All thirty Everleigh Club harlots remained upstairs in their boudoirs, preparing for the night ahead, running razors under their arms, down and between their legs—clients didn’t have a smooth woman at home. They packed themselves with sponges, made certain they had enough douche, checked cabinets for the little black pills that, along with three days of hot baths, usually “brought a girl around” from any unwanted condition. They yanked and tied one another’s corsets, buttoned up gowns made of slippery silk, unrolled black stockings over long legs. Hair was wound tight with pins or left to fall in tousled waves, depending on the preference of their regulars. A dab of gasoline—the newest fad in perfume, if you couldn’t afford an automobile—behind the ears, across the wrists and ankles, between the breasts. Eyes rimmed in black and lashes painted, standing stiffer than the prongs of a fork. Each courtesan had a name chosen by her peers. Once she entered this life—the life—she discarded all remnants of the one she’d left behind..."

("Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul", 2007)

A dab of gasoline—the newest fad in perfume, if you couldn’t afford an automobile—behind the ears, across the wrists and ankles, between the breasts!

“We’re finding that the ones we tested perfume and makeup on are extremely attractive to me.”

 Artist: Zachary Kanin, The New Yorker