LOVE & TRAVEL - PERFUME

Author Divrina Dhingra distils the varied fragrances of the many places she has called home

- Divrina Dhingra

I've been a homebody since I was young. When I was a girl, home's small pleasures-my bookshelf, the trundle bed with wheels that travelled across the floor of seemingly its own volition each night, the comforting enclosedness and safety of my room-dominated the map of my limited world. It extended just enough to encompass my parents' room, across the narrow corridor from mine, and a closet built into the wall, its deep shelves holding linens, a jumble of dust-covered shoes, and assorted hardware, perfect for hiding in.

Most crucially, it included the back garden, the setting for many games played solo and in company, both imaginary and of flesh. A large patch of desultory grass, it held four spindly papaya trees and had a sagging clothesline strung across the length of it. In some far corner, out of sight there was a tangle of juhi, untended to and unremarkable until in bloom, and then it asserted its presence through its intensely floral, balsamic fragrance that rang out after dark.

At the time, I didn't know what it was. I scarcely cared. I knew only that it was, like home itself, a reliable presence, a mundane but essential part of my life. It was a fragrance that quite unconsciously I began to rely upon to spell out home; haven. Love.

These love stories usually begin before we imagine they do, and so mine perhaps did in that home, before change swept in, swift and remorseless, ushering in abrupt endings and unfamiliar new beginnings.