Gosaikunda: Go, go, go
WHEN THE INVISIBLE BECOMES VISIBLE
Ashok Silwal
The past fews days
I was returning home
From a wonderful trek-pilgrimage
To our incredibly beautiful and suggestive
Holy Gosaikunda Lake
Created by Lord Shiva
Thrusting his holy Trishula in a mountain.
My eyes were still full of the spectacles
That Nature has offered me
My ears still heard the laughters with my friend
And the sound of music and songs
My mouth still tasted the special local potatoes
Images and memories preserved by my senses.
Arriving in front of home
It is my nose that’s being solicited
Is it a smell?
A fragrance, a scent, an aroma
A perfume, a redolence, an odor ?
Words are often used interchangeably
Even if they have specific technical aspects
To define the differences:
With oil, with alcohol, with water,
Referring to food, to flowers,
Artificially created or naturally occurring.
But that’s not our purpose here.
What I was smelling in front at home
Even before entering was ‘home perfume’;
A mix of smells : of furniture, curtains and carpets,
Of people I love, of books, of cooking,
Of freshly washed laundry, of shoes, of beds, of spices
Then smells become memories, gestures
Colored light bulbs that turn on.
THE INVISIBLE BECOMES VISIBLE
I feel good in this mixture of compounds
Put together by life to create a specific smell
The one of my home;
It refers to a thousand episodes
Of smiles and tears, in birth and death;
It refers music, dances and silences;
It refers to tiny moments and long waitings;
It refers to days and nights
Smells and perfumes create a firework
Of colors and images
Giving back to the heart
What it seemed to have lost.
Then I know that if the smell was visible
Like a color, I would see a spring garden, a rainbow
The smell of home is reassuring
Because it evokes all the little things
Of everyday life, in routine and discovery.
And I was thinking about a famous French writer
I read something at the University
And who had struck me with his ideas,
Marcel PROUST , 1871-1922, in ‘In search of lost time’
He tells a famous episode called the ‘Madeleine’
When, as an adult, he dipped this biscuit
Into his tea and the flavor brought back all his past.
We all have little ‘madeleines’ inside:
Perfumes, scents, fragrances, odors
Smells, aromas, redolences in our hearts
That keeps images and memories alive
Ready to transform
THE INVISIBLE INTO THE VISIBLE.
…
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