bhaskar saikia

We live in a world ruled by sight — a world of screens, images, and endless brightness. Yet long before eyes evolved, smell was life’s first language.

Smell guides everything that breathes. It tells a moth where the flowers bloom, helps a deer recognize its mate, and lets a mushroom lure insects to carry its spores. In the natural world, scent is information — a chemistry of connection.

But smell is also deeply human. A faint whiff of petrichor — that earthy aroma after rain — can transport us home to our childhood. The smell of an old book, or the smoke of a distant fire, awakens memory far more vividly than sight ever could. That’s because our olfactory system connects directly to the limbic brain, the seat of emotion and memory.

Smell, then, is both science and nostalgia. It is the bridge between what is outside and what lives inside us. We breathe the same air that trees exhale, the same molecules that once floated through ancient forests.

Every breath is a quiet exchange — between the living and the remembered. To pay attention to what we smell is to reconnect with the most primal part of being alive.