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OLFACTORY (A Short Story)

Feb 21 2008 | Views 4463 | Comments (21)

"Olfactory" (a short story) By Madhumita Datta When Ramesh died in a... Expand

"Olfactory" (a short story)

By Madhumita Datta

When Ramesh died in a car accident on his way back from work on a regular day, he left his wife Shruti’s world in a suspended state of abrupt bizarreness. Shruti was never very emotional, at least not publicly. She shed very few tears. She took care of Ramesh’s last rites rather efficiently for a just-widowed wife. Ramesh’s parents were too old and incapacitated to fly all the way from India to the American suburb that Ramesh and Shruti had made their home for the last fifteen years. Shruti’s parents did fly in, as they expected their daughter to be quite distraught and helpless at such a difficult moment. They were even prepared to take Shruti back to India for good with them. They did not see the point of her staying alone in America with Ramesh gone forever. Ramesh and Shruti did not have any children.

To her parents’ surprise, Shruti kept herself completely together, and made it very clear that she intended to keep staying at her home, and not go back to India --- at least not yet. She assured them that she would be fine. She certainly looked confident in her assertion. Shruti had a teaching job at a Montessori school, which only paid modestly. However, Ramesh had quite a hefty life insurance policy, which made sure that Shruti would do just fine financially. Shruti’s parents went back to India after Shruti promised that she would go back to them the first day she would feel lonely and insecure.

After her parents left, Shruti realized that she was not particularly uncomfortable living alone in the house, but she gradually started feeling a weird sense of boring solitude hanging heavy all around the house. It was not that she was not used to spending time alone. After coming back from her school latest by 1 o’ clock, she had the whole afternoon and evening to herself. Ramesh was a workaholic, and a cyber-junkie too. He used to come back from work at around 9 most of the nights, and used to go straight to the family room, taking out his laptop for casual web browsing while watching news on TV. He was in no way insensitive to Shruti’s need for companionship though. If anything, Shruti loved Ramesh dearly because Ramesh perfectly understood Shruti’s quiet but absolute zeal for defining her own territory --something that Shruti’s parents never understood. There was a little corridor that connected the family room with the kitchen. Shruti used to look forward to their intermittent conversation where she would say something to Ramesh while making dinner in the kitchen, and Ramesh’s response from the family room would come back to her slightly muffled in the course of its travel through the corridor. At times, she would have to guess what he was saying because of garbled noises coming from the TV, but that used to make the conversation even more interesting to Shruti. She used to enjoy the guessing part, and took pride in how good she had become in her guessing skills. She felt that she knew Ramesh so well that she could anticipate what Ramesh might have said even if she couldn’t hear him properly.

There were some evenings when Shruti would feel like trying a new blend of spices in her cooking. Ramesh was not a kitchen enthusiast himself. For that matter, he was not demanding at all about his dinner. Whatever simple dishes Shruti made -- cooking was not Shruti’s passion either -- Ramesh would eat with complete satisfaction. However, he never failed to detect when Shruti had used a special masala blend in her cooking. He would smell the dishes with his eyes closed, and would try to guess what spices were in them. He seldom guessed right, but Shruti always found his gesture impossibly endearing.

In her lonely evenings after Ramesh’s death, Shruti started missing those simple random moments of couplehood where she and Ramesh had interacted with the perfect intangible symbiosis of involvement and non-interference. One evening she suddenly became aware that she was having a ‘conversation’ with Ramesh while making dinner for herself in the kitchen. Though there was nobody to judge her, or accuse her of hallucinating, she became quite embarrassed with herself. Then, a surge of frustration engulfed her. It was most inconsiderate of Ramesh to die so abruptly without letting her plan how to deal with his absence, she kept thinking. That night, for the first time, Shruti went to bed with a predominant feeling of annoyance rather than a passively inorganic sense of grief.

The next morning Shruti woke up with a bad headache, but with a clearer perspective. She realized she needed to get a better grip on her sensibility. She knew that it was completely unfair to blame Ramesh and feel bitter about what happened. Accidents happen, and it was not something that Ramesh had the power to prevent. Shruti decided to talk to a few colleagues, asking for suggestions on how to cope with her unplanned singlehood. She was certainly not ready for a relationship, but there had to be other ways of constructive distraction, she thought.

“My daughter works at a local hospice, and I know that they constantly look for volunteers to work there. Why don’t you contact her? You can go in the afternoon after the school is over,” Shruti’s fellow teacher Emma advised. “Of course you may not like being around people who are dying, specially in the wake of your own traumatic loss. But I think it is worth trying, and you will certainly feel that you are making a positive difference in someone else’s last journey by providing companionship,” Emma added.

Shruti always had great respect for Emma. Emma had a very busy domestic life taking care of her grandchildren after going back home from school, but she was always intimately involved with the school’s extra-curricular activities -- something Shruti never managed to bring herself into doing. In some convoluted way, not having her own children prevented Shruti from giving herself 100% to the school and the students beyond her classroom duties. She was a competent teacher, but she treated her job as just a job, not as her passion. In fact, Shruti was aware that she was a born-introvert, and she did not exude visible signs of passion for anything that she did. Perhaps that was not a very good characteristic for a hospice volunteer, she thought. However, she had nothing to lose. And for a strange reason, she felt drawn to the idea of being able to be close to people who knew they were living the last days of their lives. Shruti had never seen death. She did not have the chance to see Ramesh’s transition from being alive to being dead. It was all too sudden for her. A part of her wanted to confront death before it delivered its final blow. Shruti decided to try volunteering at the “Angel Wings” hospice, where Emma’s daughter Julie worked.

Julie picked Shruti up from school, and escorted her to the hospice on her first day. Paula, the matronly lady who was in charge of training new volunteers, welcomed her with a kind yet seasoned professional smile on her face. “We aim to de-institutionalize the experience of death for the patients, and bring a humane touch, and our volunteers are an essential part of our vision. In fact, it is required by the federal law that at least 5% of the patient care hours have to be provided by volunteers,”[1] Paula said in a tone that suggested that she had been giving this introductory tour of the hospice to a lot of new volunteers on a regular basis.

They were walking along a corridor, when Shruti suddenly interrupted Paula, and asked, “I guess you can tell that I am an immigrant from India. I have been in this country for the last fifteen years, but I certainly don’t know a lot of cultural things about America. Would that be a problem with your patients?”

Paula paused for a moment, and said, “These people know that their days are numbered. Why would it matter to them whether you are from India or Peru or Hungary? All they care about is your undivided attention when you are with them.” Paula then broke into a controlled grin. “And don’t worry, you are not the first Indian immigrant volunteer I am dealing with. None of them asked me that question before though.” she said. Shruti smiled back at Paula. She was already feeling much relaxed.

Shruti’s first assigned patient was Isabella, a 95-year old woman with a shriveled body, but no specific disease other than extreme geriatry. Isabella was considered an ‘easy case’ suitable for a first time volunteer like Shruti. Isabella lost complete eyesight on both of her eyes, but her brain was quite functional, and she could move her hands, though very slowly. She could not walk, but she was very fond of outdoors. So a nurse wheeled her chair out on a porch and parked her next to a landscaped garden when it was not too cold outside.

It turned out that the last volunteer that Isabella was assigned to, a girl named Megan, made quite a positive impression on her. Megan was a high school girl, who went back to school after summer ended, and Isabella certainly missed her badly. “Megan was so chirpy and bright,” Isabella kept saying. Her voice was fragile, but she managed to convey her likes and dislikes just fine. Shruti sensed that Isabella was somewhat angry with the hospice nurses for ‘taking Megan away’ from her. The replacement, Shruti, not being as ‘chirpy and bright’ as Megan, certainly did not help soothe her anger. Isabella did not throw any tantrums, but decided not to warm up to Shruti instantly. It was her way of non-cooperation with the hospice.

Shruti returned home that evening not completely thrilled by her new job, especially because her very first patient was acting rather distant, but she was not particularly disappointed either. The uniqueness of the job certainly stimulated her inside, and she did not even realize how quickly time flew that day. She was happy that she did not have to toil to consciously kill time doing nothing after coming back from the school. She warmed up some leftovers in the microwave for dinner, and went to sleep quite exhausted.

The next day was a Saturday, and Shruti did not have to go to school in the morning. She woke up late, and to her surprise, she felt quite alive and satisfied inside. Seeing herself against the backdrop of terminally ill patients at the hospice the day before made her freshly aware of her own throbbing, breathing existence. She went to the kitchen to cook something new. She was in the mood for trying out a yet unexperimented spice blend. She reached for her spice jars at the back of the kitchen cabinet that she had not opened in months. Rosemary, thyme, dried garlic and onion flakes, crushed olives, cracked black peppers, saffron, turmeric, oregano, lime zest, cinnamon -- she had quite an eclectic global collection. Shruti looked at the spices with an apologetic eye, as if she wanted the spices to forgive her for neglecting them lately. She started cooking a completely improvised pasta dish randomly adding Indian and Mediterranean spices -- her two favorites. The dish turned out to be quite delicious, and Shruti gave herself compliments for her adventurous approach to cooking, something that Ramesh would sure have appreciated.

Sitting idly in front of the TV under the filtered sunlight coming through the skylight, Shruti suddenly felt the urge to go to the hospice to see how Isabella was doing. Paula told Shruti that she could visit the hospice any time she wanted to. Shruti took out her car keys. The “Angel Wings” hospice was a short drive from her home. She went straight to the porch by the garden where Isabella was sitting, fixing her gaze to somewhere far. As Shruti was walking towards Isabella, the fragile old lady turned her head towards her. Isabella could not see Shruti through her translucent eyes devoid of eyesight, but she was looking straight into Shruti’s eyes. “You smell good, Shruti. You smell like my kitchen garden in Italy,” Isabella said with a nostalgic smile brightening up her face. Shruti’s eyes moistened, and she held Isabella in a tight embrace. Isabella couldn’t see, but she sure could smell the scent of spices lingering on to Shruti from the kitchen.

From that day, Isabella forgot all about her previous companion Megan, and Shruti forgot all about being lonely. A new game started between them. Shruti would blend a variety of spices, and bring a little bit of spice blend wrapped in a handkerchief to the hospice, and would hold it close to Isabella’s nose. Unlike Ramesh, who used to mostly guess wrong, Isabella would guess the ingredients right most of the days. Isabella told Shruti that she was an adventurous cook herself when she was young, and had tried spices from all over the world in her cooking. She would tell stories from her kitchen with such a vivacity, that sometimes Shruti wondered whether Isabella was indeed going to die shortly. She never imagined that her spices held the key to a dying 95-year old Italian lady’s feeling of happiness in her final days.

One of the weekends, Shruti took the Metro to go to the big city from her suburban home, in search of a small spice store, which supposedly had an exotic collection of middle-Eastern spices. She got the store’s address from a Lebanese colleague of hers. The array of neatly organized spice jars delighted her as soon as she entered the store. She bought nutmeg, dried cherry, babounej, sumac, and many other tempting-looking and fittingly-named spices to her heart’s content. On her way back from the city, she was envisioning Isabella having a tough time figuring out the ingredients of the blend she was going to make with all her new exotic spice possessions.

Shruti saw the light of her answering machine blinking when she got home. There was a message from Paula from the hospice. Isabella was not feeling well, and had asked if she could see Shruti, Paula’s message said. Shruti rushed to the hospice. Isabella was lying in her bed. She was groaning feebly. One of the nurses was running her fingers gently through Isabella’s hair to comfort her. Shruti took Isabella’s gnarled palm in her hand, and said softly, “Isabella, are you in pain?” Isabella labored to turn her head towards Shruti, and uttered almost inaudibly, “I can’t smell the spices today. I am too tired.” She was awake for a few more minutes, and then she closed her eyes, and went to sleep. Something told Shruti that Isabella would not wake up anymore.

Shruti went home with a heavy heart. This time she could see death coming slowly to take away somebody who she loved. Unlike Ramesh, she could not blame Isabella for leaving her unprepared. Shruti’s house was filled with the aroma of the freshly bought middle-Eastern spices. Ramesh and Isabella became blended in Shruti’s thoughts in death and in aroma. n

[1] Data available from http://www.hospicefoundation.org/hospiceInfo/volunteer.asp