This song really haunts me at times,
“I’m going back someday,
come what may, to Blue Bayou
Where the folks are fun and the world is mine on Blue Bayou
Where those fishing boats with their sails afloat
If I could only see
that familiar sunrise Through sleepy eyes,
how happy I’d be”
Linda Ronstadt lends her nostalgia evoking voice to this Roy Orbison original and she ensures that she imparts this feeling of longing and overwhelming desire to go back to the place where we will see some faces brightening on seeing us…
In the name of creating a career, better future and a place under the sun, many of us have had to remain away from their native places for longest of times! A question always remains whether we belong here, however hard we may try! When will be most opportune time when one can go back to the place where “ we will see that familiar sunrise through sleepy eyes!” As the song goes on….
Have you ever had a chance to notice that many fond memories have this clear link with particular smell and sound of the place! Smell of the first rain in one’s native village or sound of crickets at night which we miss in cities, evoke beautiful memories of childhood or vacation trips to the hometown! I had always wondered whether these smells could be recreated to evoke these fond memories and I was startled to come across a YouTube documentary that outlined this perfume industry based out of a town in northern India, Kanauj- Known as the perfume capital of India, that has still retained the skill sets for this amazing feat of recreating and storing the fragrance of first rain on earth!
I have always wondered, just like we can capture an image of a place and also the sound, why couldn’t the technology evolve enough to also capture the fragrance of the space being captured? There certainly must have been a lot of experiments done that we may not know of. On searching online, following are the two examples of such a research that jumps out from the rest:
One example of a device that can capture and reproduce smells is the Cyrano device, developed by the company Vapor Communications. Cyrano is a small, handheld device that uses scent cartridges to produce a wide range of smells, which can be customized and combined to create different scents. However, this device does not actually capture smells from the environment, but rather uses pre-made scent cartridges.
Another example is the oPhone, which is a device that uses scent cartridges and an accompanying app to allow users to send and receive scented messages. However, this device has limited functionality and is not widely available.
The fragrance of various events in life and the sound that accompanies them, actually form the soundtrack of our life! Did you notice I classified sound and smell in the same category, this is because as per recent research in Quantum mechanics, receptors in our nose actually detects vibrations of various molecules forming the smell! Have plans to outline this in proposed future blogs of mine!
MindSoundandSpace! 