What does Madras smell like to me?

I searched for clues near my home, quickly found the more obvious ones; coconut oil, filter coffee (kaapi, if you want to drive your forced Tamizhness off the edge) and camphor. Or richer, more complicated notes like sweat, crisp sarees, grime and raw mangoes.

The beach, Diwali smoke, old books, chappals, cricket, molaga bajjis and rickshaws are clearly mother smells, made up of smaller, distinct ones in varying proportions, cooked to different degrees of Madras heat.

Could the answer be something as simple as with complicated algebra questions, which almost always end with zero or one or root two or sin 30, but never the answer you were forced to guess.

I paused this quest to focus on our trip to the family temple which held enough nostalgia to tranquillise an elephant. Started the morning with a bath, the kind only a bucket and a mug can provide. The blanket of warm water covering your skin carries moments that the cold precision of a shower can never bear.

Entering the temple for the first time with our daughter and without my father felt like walking into a very obvious emotional trap. As the priests hit home, my eyes welled up in seconds. I laughed at how easily I was played, like when you watch an underdog sports movie and you already know he’s going to catch the ball, and he does, and you choke.

But that helped me finally catch my answer: jasmine flowers and the ocean

That’s what Madras will always smell like to me, a little sweet, a little salty, like a teardrop shed for a loved one.