The Lost Intimacy of Smell

About a month ago, I contracted COVID-19. I was lucky enough to experience only mild symptoms, the most debilitating ones were the constant fatigue and breathlessness. However, there was an unexpected challenge waiting for me.

On day three of isolation, while waiting for my test results, I decided to carry out an experiment. I’d heard that the loss of smell and taste is one of the most accurate predictors of the virus, so I set out to test the hypothesis. I waded through the ocean of blankets and used tissue paper on my bed to make it to my perfume shelf.

There it was, the grand reveal: I sprayed my Warm Vanilla Sugar perfume on my wrist and leaned in to take a whiff. My nose burned and my eyes watered. I could feel the cool spray on my skin, but the familiar notes of vanilla, jasmine, and sugar were missing. Perhaps I’d known intuitively that I’d contracted the virus – tipped off by the bone-deep fatigue – but this is when it really sank in.

Like everyone else, during lockdown, I had been keeping myself sane by indulging in life’s smaller, less-appreciated pleasures. This meant long showers with my strawberry-scented shower gel, moisturising with cocoa butter, walks after rain, and of course, cooking elaborate meals with my family. Now I had to spend two weeks all alone. To top it all, I couldn’t smell or taste a thing.


Also read: Welcome to Your Sensory Revolution, Thanks to the Pandemic


During my fortnight-long solitude, I began to fantasise about food, about its smell. Deprived of human touch, sequestered within four walls, and confined to the bed, I’d spend the time between meals dreaming of hot coffee in the morning, of parathas with butter, of rasam with rice and ghee, of chocolate cookies baking in the oven. I’d obsessively sniff my hand sanitiser, my soap, my hair.

My parents took it as a challenge and began cooking elaborate meals, trying to coax my sense of smell to return through hope and sheer stubbornness. It worked, or maybe the antibiotics did – on day eight, I took a breath and was hit with the distinctive odour of fried eggs and butter on toast. The elusive smell-angel blessed me for a few seconds and went back into hiding. It was a primitive experience, filling me with the urge to absorb the smell into my soul and keep it there. Transient as it might have been, it gave me hope.

I struggled to explain the feeling to my family. Beyond words like sharp, sweet, clean, and absent, I did not have the words to describe smell. It is a sense forever in a liminal space, defined by an inarticulate, animal reverence; a relic of the days when it was integral to survival. I also found that it defines so much of my identity. The scent of my mother’s powder, my father’s aftershave, of my own sweat, the smoky smell of incense, the musky smell of books – these are smells that ground me and remind me of who I am. Without them, I felt lost, unmoored in a vast sensory ocean.

Today, my sense of smell is slowly coming back to me. I open my arms in an embrace, grateful for everything I can smell once more, however faint. Every meal begins with my head bent low, a deep breath in, an act of worship, celebration, and reclamation.

Anumita Vaishnavi is an undergraduate student of Journalism at Christ University, Bangalore. She also writes poetry, which can be found here.

Featured image credit: JL G/Pixabay