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Tuesday 2 December 2008

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We should resist the globalisation of smells. From London to Delhi, stench is truth

They’ve cracked Russia already, by focusing on paranoia and women. Tell a Russian woman that she uses far less roll-on than anybody else, even a Brit, and she minds: she buys. In Asia, they’re targeting the men. ‘Asia is a market we have never really cracked,’ some fragrant Unilever bigwig told the Times. ‘They don’t think they smell, but people everywhere smell.’

To disagree would set us on a dangerous path. And yet I have been to India, several times, and I have smelled many, many Indian things. Food, incense, diesel and s*** are the ones which stick in the mind. Unless I am blanking it out, the human body didn’t make much of an impression.

At least, not in that sense. There is a familiar, sickly sweet fug that hangs over the city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, which I sniffed at, and wondered about, and didn’t figure out until I wandered down to the burning ghats. That’s where they wrap the corpses in white shrouds, burn them on pyres, and tip what remains into the Ganges. It doesn’t smell like person. It smells like bacon. For years afterwards, my flatmate used to find me hovering dreamily over the stove, so transported by our sizzling breakfast that I could almost hear the rickshaw hooters and the temple bells.

As a species, I suspect we are close to being olfactorally illiterate. We don’t know where we are, and we don’t know what to expect. Smells can leave us punch drunk and reeling, or they can slip under our conscious radar altogether. In seven out of ten tests, maybe they can send us straight to that chair. And maybe the age of the nose is just beginning. It will be reborn noses that ultimately do it for cigarettes in Britain, not banning fags from shop displays. We’ve been out of the Mad Men miasma for many years, but wearing your suit on an evening out has only just stopped meaning a trip to the dry cleaners, or a week of smelling like Charles Kennedy. Suddenly, we are learning how one urinal pineapple cube can flavour a whole pub. I wonder if our deodorant sales are dropping off, too?

More articles from: Hugo Rifkind | this section

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