In Continuum.

Scent Of A Woman

Humans rely more than we admit, on our noses. We usually associate attractions between two people with the sense of sight, and maybe the sense of touch sometimes, depending on what you like that person for. Or the sight of a gift from somebody special, or old exam papers tucked at the back of your desk, might just remind you of that old crush you had in school and the dreadful exam periods. The truth is, we've neglected the importance of our noses, and usually only giving praise to their brilliant abilities to sense cooking dinner, silent killer gas in lifts, outlet for mucuses and sinus.

There was this Discovery Channel documentary on the sense of smell once, and it was talking about how humans rely subconsciously on their noses to find their perfect partner. Kind of like the way dogs sniff each others' butts to find their mating partner. But of course, seeing that on the streets or in a local bar would be rather disturbing, unless you are the kind who likes the kinky sort of things.

But anyway, the same can be said about memory triggering actually. The sense of smell has a more direct and accurate way of triggering a part of your brain than saying, seeing something before your eyes. It is much easier to forget how something looks like, than to forget how something smells like even if you don't make it a point to remember. It's like swimming or riding a bicycle. I don't think anybody can unlearn those things, save for Ahmad who probably had an amnesia some time in his teenage years, and had an amnesia about the amnesia...I hope that made sense.

I must admit, that I almost completely forgot about my Basic Theory Test yesterday night when my mother asked if I want to hitch a ride in her car to SSDC before she goes to the office. I studied the night away, feeling good about mugging again after all these years staying away from any form of textbooks and notes. I even made notes and pointers in the book itself, even more detailed and careful than I was when I was in school, how ridiculous is that? I know it is only the Basic Theory Test, but I guess you have to see it from my point of view. When you haven't taken any form of tests for the past two years, been trying every ways and means to stay away from them, and not knowing what you are in for, it gets a little scary. But hey, I passed the test in under ten minutes and left the room with the Indian man across the aisle, unable to read the questions because all he knew was Tamil. Good luck on him, and the Japanese man next to me.

On the way home from the MRT station, sitting with her back facing me on the stone bench at the station was a woman whose face I didn't catch. The tennis players over the tracks at the sports hall surfed under the baking hot sun, and the creeping sensation of the heat crawled up my spine. The heat of the late morning was getting to me then, and with the salty smell in the air of my evaporating sweat, a familiar smell came to my nose then. I sniffed around like a dog discreetly, and found the culprit to be the woman sitting behind.

To say that she is a culprit is to put it crudely, because it's not like there was anything repugnant about the smell. It reminded me of something I couldn't put my fingers on, and digging deep into my memory vault I realized that it smelled almost exactly like the classroom in my kindergarten.

Noses also have the ability of time traveling I suppose, because on the way back to Bishan I started thinking about the way the kindergarten looked, sounded or smelled. I don't remember speaking much about it here, so I might as well take the opportunity to do so.

I remember the wooden tables and the plastic chairs, line up in neat rows before a stage. Strictly speaking, it wasn't really a classroom, but a space divided by partitions that served as a classroom. Before the blackboard where my teacher usually stood, is a performing stage I remember, and that was where my first days of school started in Singapore, if you called that a school at all. Besides, without any knowledge of English behind ABCs, I managed to find my way through the drawing and singing lessons. Interesting to see how far I have come in terms of my language(Though I know, it is still rough around the edges).

In the middle of the hexagon table, there was a plastic basket the size of a tissue box, and inside it will be used and unused crayons, stained on the sides and broken for some of them. Once the blank pieces of paper are distributed, the children around the table will dive towards the middle like hungry madmen, afraid that their favorite color will be snatched by others. I've been known in the family to have long arms and legs every since I was born. In fact, my parents constantly tell the stories to their friends about how they placed their palms to mine at birth and was astonished by the size of it. I've heard it on a million occasions, and smiled condescendingly and accordingly during those times. But I guess this is when it came to good use in life.

Everything in my picture was either orange or yellow, except maybe the skies and the grass. The birds would be orange or yellow, the people would be orange or yellow, and everything else would be orange or yellow. I remember the teacher giving us a paper of a black and white clock, and asked us to color it. Of course, I picked orange and yellow again, simply because they looked nice together, to me.

The habit of talking was instilled in me ever since young, and instead of sitting on the mat like all the other good students in class, I usually spent my hours next to the blackboard, watching the class from the teacher's point of view because I refused to keep my mouth shut despite the utter lack of vocabulary to communicate. Playing with the chalk or the chalk dust, whatever went on on the blackboard usually went into one side of my head and came out the other. I never quite listened to the teacher, and I cultivated the habit of hating teachers early on in my life(Though I have a different idea about it now).

My teacher was a menacing woman, probably in her mid fifties back then and always wearing the same indigo long skirt and the button top with strange rope-and-anchor designs. I don't think she liked me all that much, and I prayed deep in my heart that the principal would teach us instead of this old witch. The principal was a nice lady in her thirties, and always dressed in pink, looking perky. But she never stepped into the class, not once. And for a long time I was stuck with the old witch next to the chalkboard with no means of escape whatsoever.

There was an old lady in charge of the food in the school, and I remember her pushing the cart of soup around in her flowery dress, her plump old arms flowing out of the sleeves like dough. She would smile at the hungry children scrambling towards her during tea time before lunch, and distribute the soup contained in shallow orange bowls all around. I only ever ate one one of them, and if I don't have that particular soup I don't eat anything at all. I was asked to eat a little bit of everything by the old lady once, but sitting at the table with my drawing instruments, I preferred the orange and yellow hamburgers I drew than the leftover food on the cart.

The lady whose back was against me at the MRT station, for some reason, smelled like the soup that I particularly liked. I think I have an awful way of relating the smell of a person's body to something that I am familiar with. But that was what triggered that old memory of mine at that time I guess, and to remember little details such as these now is a great feeling. It makes me a little bit more real I guess, to know that I have a history to draw on, than one that was imagined or fabricated. It makes me know that I have a place in history, somewhere and somehow, and not just a blimp of sorts that disappears in a blink of an eye to the rest of the world.