I don’t think any house in India was completely isolated
from the mouse menace in the 90’s. The time where mice were part our
households, a member of the family kinds. With the problem came the solution i.e.
Mouse traps and there was a rush to purchase the same. These traps were pretty
effective in catching their prey but the big question was what to do after
catching them. People use to travel miles and miles to throw them at the far
off garbage disposal grounds, but unfortunately that didn’t help mainly because
it was a viscous cycle where you will dispose them somewhere and other person
too does the same, therefore the mice never lost their numbers they were just
getting new homes.
After the debacle, Mortein came up with a fresh idea of
poison cakes which can be kept at places where there is a possibility of the
mouse. The mouse will eat them, that will choke their lungs and they will run
outside for air and eventually die. Great idea, we just have to put the green
cake and it will do the rest, but unfortunately it is not full proof, most of
the times the rat dies at the hardest to reach corners of the house making life
miserable.
This is my story of such incident where a rat died after the
poison cake at the most unwanted location – The 'store', where we usually dump
everything which is unwanted for now.
And then came the bomb; from where this horrible smell is
coming? Mom said and eyes start rolling. Horrible smells are associated
with a fart, smelly socks, to the extreme of who didn’t took bath today. After the
blame game, teasing, literally checking and after counting out all these
possibilities we start checking the room. Searching for these bad odors can be
a frustrating task, but with mom’s perseverance everything is achievable. It was making us crazy, thinking what the heck is
stinking so bad and finally we found the dead body (mystery solved) and I was
chosen for the rituals of cremating it off to the farthest location possible.
My association with exotic smell is when mother bakes and
cooks. The smell just drives you nuts, the temptation is irresistible and you
just try your best to grab and stuffed it into your mouth.
How can I forget my other nostalgic associations with smell like the smell of wet
mud after the enchanting rains when I would sit for hrs (inhaling as much as possible), gazing outside and
penning down random stuff, the smell of a fresh new book, where I keep reading and flipping
pages to get the fresh smell experience time and again and last but not the least the smell of a fresh
paint which reminds me of my awesome childhood involvements. :)
Happy Breathing!!
