Air that moves us
Two distinct instances upon de-boarding a plane and being roused by the air.
What I smelt at twelve as my first adult memory of returning to India: a deep putrid stench of smog, spice and gutter. I remember hoping the smell was specific to the airport region and imagining the scent of Delhi and beyond to be fragrant with candied fennel and damp spices (what Nikki’s suitcase always smelled of whenever she returned from her India trips). Some fourty eight hours later we arrived late at night in my mother’s hometown village, or the pindh — a specific term denoting a small rural village in Punjab. The next morning it finally moved me, the air of the foggy morning and scent of cow’s milk boiling atop flames in clay for morning tea, a message from air to my nostrils: home of your ancestors.
Two decades on and I have not felt the air move me on arriving or returning to any other city in the world (and there have been many). Though in my various visits to Sydney in the past year, the air moves me again. The plane pulls into Kingsford Smith Airport and as soon as I enter the airport, there is no specific scent but rather a feeling is delivered. The air is positively clean and refreshing so at best the scent is neutral — the taste of water. What the air compels is a palm to cup the cheeks, a finger that traces the brow to tuck the hair behind the ear: the home she made yours.
Imagine what the day of a city churns up, how the air of it swells and blends and absorbs its people, its textures, its sonics, its altitude, its temperature, its traffic, its cries, its birds, its words spoken all day by its millions of occupants. Now imagine that churn as a unique soup, an atmosphere, greeting a passenger who returns to it.
What were the pre-existing conditions that allowed me to receive?