The Fragrance

It was midnight and few guys were simply enjoying their last cigarette on one of the corridors. Late nights during the winter usually used to be quite shivering at our hostel, which was surrounded by hills and situated on the outskirt of Guwahati, pretty much close to the university campus. One of the guys looked little uncomfortable, as he took few deep breaths and exclaimed in a weird manner "Chii...  what the hell is that?"

Another guy replied in surprise "What happened to you? What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Abbe dude! Something smells very terrible"

The remaining guys also started to take deep breaths and after few attempts, even they also felt the fragrance. They had a quick inspection of the surrounding and everyone moved a little further from their original smoking zone and stopped at a particular place, where they found the smell to be highly concentrated. It was freezing cold that moment and they couldn’t identify the damn thing which created such an euphoric aroma all around. After a while they simply decided to go back to their rooms. 

Next morning the filthy smell transformed into highly decomposed and extremely intolerable. We were in our first semester that time and it was quite frustrating for some of the seniors whose rooms were within the proximity of the smelly zone. They tried their best to solve the mystery and their investigation took them towards a room. There’s no doubt that something was terribly wrong inside that room, but it was locked from outside. The room belonged to one of our immediate senior and he used to be one of the greatest personality of our hostel. He was quite popular with the name "Khor" among his friends and in fact, even today also many of his friends call him with the same name. He usually used to wear jeans, full sleeve shirts, leather shoes and his trademark was his neck scarf. That was his dress code throughout the year, irrespective of any weather and any season. We usually used to see him with his typical dress code right from morning till midnight. After dinner he used to play table tennis for a couple of hours with the same cloths and the same pair of shoes, which he used to wear in the morning. Ultimately at around 12:30 midnight, he used go to his room. That time when he used to open his leather shoes, my goodness, the fragrance immediately used to spread on the entire corridor and sometimes even the guys on the adjacent block also felt the hypnotizing aroma. Well, he was a masterpiece and I haven't met anyone closer to him  till now. But he's quite a changed man now and I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't curse me after reading this.

The holidays supposed to have started the next week, but as usual, the entire 3rd semester batch honestly and enthusiastically participated in their mass bunking. Without wasting enough time the seniors broke the lock and as soon as they opened the door, the smell would've almost killed those guys and they felt as if they entered a morgue. Ultimately the mystery was solved and everyone was totally amazed to find the source of the tragedy. It was a bucket filled with clothes in detergent water from last several days. They immediately took the bucket to the nearest washroom and continuously flushed water on it for a long time. After sometime the smell gradually diminished, but that particular room and it's nearby surrounding still had the rotten kind of smell. Some guys tried to purify the area and lighted some aggarbattis. 

Years later, I was in Bangalore and used to stay with few of my friends. Even though we all were quite changed by that time, but old habits die hard and on top of that our great Khor also used to stay with us. After the late night weekend parties, the condition of the Hall next morning used to be just "Masha Allah!" kind of. Actually we insiders never felt the aroma and couldn’t realize that actually we’re inside a perfume factory. We didn’t believe any of our guests whenever they used to complain about our smelly rooms every time they visited us. But on one particular Sunday morning at around 10:30 AM, one of our roommates called and said that he would reach home within an hour along with his parents. Oh!  Shit!! We almost forgot that his parents were supposed to have visited us that day. We got too much tensed, as our prestige was at stake. We reacted immediately and started to work on that. We shared the work and one of us started to clean the washroom, someone tried to make the Kitchen little hygienic, which was almost like a garbage dump. One of our friends got quite busy collecting and disposing all those beautiful bottles of different shapes and sizes and yes, those cigarette packets as well. Later I went outside to buy a couple of room fresheners. 

After about 45 minutes of exhaustive hard work, everything seemed to be perfect. The kitchen looked hygienic and orderly as well. The washrooms looked almost clean enough so that a normal human being could have spent a couple of minutes out there without any sort of embarrassment. The hall also looked clean enough and someone arranged the chairs properly. But as soon as I had entered the house, I realized that my friends were not wrong when they used to complain about our smelly house. That was my first opportunity to have had entered our own house on a Sunday morning. It almost felt as if I entered a cattle shed. I applied the room freshener all around the house and at every possible corners. We applied them in the kitchen and the washrooms as well. We had almost finished one of the room fresheners that moment itself. 

The smell was quite mesmeric and everyone became silent for a couple of minutes, we almost felt as if we were being kind of hypnotized. The smell had a magical effect and within no time our house turned out from a cattle shed into an enchanting flower garden. The door bell rang and someone opened the door. We were pleased to see our friend along with his parents at the door. Our friend looked kind of shocked and even his parents were also seemed to have mesmerized with the fragrance all around the house. They wanted to have a little inspection of the house and specially his mother, she looked kind of suspicious and visited all the rooms and the kitchen as well. After a while she looked satisfied and said "You guys live so perfectly, actually I had a completely different impression for you guys and especially for my son. I’m so happy that you guys live so decently and not like other untidy bachelors."

Well, that was quite a compliment and everyone had a proud smile on our faces that moment.

This post is written for Indiblogger’s "Smelly To Smiley! " contest in association with AmbiPur