A whiff

There's a curious blend of mustiness and floor polish that I smelled once in Montreal that flung me right back into my Cambridge college. At work, when they replaced the carpet, the glue, over-powering, sent me back everyday to when at 4 years old, I came from school to my grandparents house and raced upstairs to where the workers were placing the flooring. Then I would come face to face with an infinite expanse of black, pungent glue waiting for the vinyl tiles to be irreversibly stuck on it... The acrid sweet whiff in the street will always remind me of Montreal. Our smell memories are the ones that are most likely to take us unawares.

I remember the smell of the spent hand-flare shells. By some freak of chemistry they smelled exactly like cumin. It was intoxicating. I sniffed the plastic shells and immediately Pondicherry came to life in my mind, (..). The experience was very strong, nearly a hallucination. From a single smell a whole town arose. (Now when I smell cumin, I see the Pacific Ocean.)

- Yann Martel, Life of Pi-