Scenterfolding Stories
Namaste.AI Magazine interview, my trip to Toronto and a whiff of nostalgia
Hello from Canada! 🇨🇦 or should I say, Satsriakal from Kannedaa!?
Lost track of time, quite literally. Posting this within 24 hours of landing in Canada!
It has been one month since Tadow met the world.
One month since an evening of stories, lights, and little leaps of faith.
So much has happened since — from generous words that arrived like postcards from hearts I’ve never met, to a surprise mention in Air India’s in-flight magazine (yes, I’ve been trying not to scream at 35,000 feet!). I haven’t had the chance to pause and share it all until now.
You can check my interview here: www.namasteaimagazine.com
I’m writing this from a quiet corner in Toronto, after making pohe for my bestie. I’ll soon be heading to the US for a bit. Not quite sure what’s in store, but isn’t that the point?
It’s not like I couldn’t have bought one in India. But there I was, meandering through a layover, half-bored, half-curious, and suddenly — Lamy. Right there. I picked up my first. Chose a few extra cartridges for good measure. And oh, what joy.
The kind that fills you up in small, deliberate strokes.
A reminder, maybe, that even in an airport, amidst lay-overs and duty-free chaos, stories sneak up on you.
What stories smell like?
"Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived." — Helen Keller
Helen Keller said that. And don’t we all believe it, even if we’ve never paused to name it?
Smell = a time machine with terrible boundaries.
One whiff, and suddenly you're not here anymore — you’re eight years old, sitting on cold mosaic floors, eating mango with turmeric-stained fingers. Or you’re back in that rickety auto ride, heart pounding, as your first crush sat beside you wearing too much Axe body spray and not enough shame.
It’s funny, isn’t it? Our eyes capture photos, but it’s our nose that captures the feeling. Memory is sneaky like that. It clings to scent more than sight. This piece is my little love letter to that sneaky, faithful sense. The one that makes you relive the story.
Let me tell you something absurd and true: The story of my childhood smells like burnt ghee on low flame. Slightly overdone, slightly perfect — like my nani’s temper. That caramelized sharpness that hits before the dal even boils.
Some stories smell like ink. The blue one. Fountain pen loyalists know. It's the scent of teenage notes and love letters never sent. The pages folded into geometry we still can’t solve.
Then there’s airport perfume — not the Chanel kind, no. The Duty-Free delirium, where time zones melt and loneliness wears highlighter. I once walked past a stranger wearing Dior Homme and almost fell in love with a memory that wasn’t mine.
Libraries, well. They smell like decaying romance. Like sandalwood from someone’s wrist and footnotes from the past. The fragrance of forgotten knowledge and unclaimed quiet.
Certainly — here’s a reimagined ending that keeps the emotional cadence, but with a slightly more lyrical, resonant flow:
I’m starting to think our lives are just scent trails in disguise — little olfactory archives tucked inside spice boxes, half-torn notebooks, the folds of an old saree, or that hoodie from a love that fizzled but never quite folded.
If you could bottle one scent and wear it like a memory, what would it be?
Maybe it’s still lingering in a kitchen you haven’t visited in years.
Maybe it’s waiting between the pages of a book you forgot to return.
Or maybe, just maybe —
you’ll find it someday, tucked into the lines of someone else’s poem.
And it will smell like home.
Keeping it raw -
Until the thirteenth,
Writeously yours,
Shalaka Kulkarni