Smell by Radhika Jha – A Book Review

There is a thundering sound up there. The first drops of rain fall on the parched earth; they have traveled miles only to splatter against the myriad surfaces  and amidst the scattering crowd looking for shelter, a penetrable smell arises; of the soil. It has always been there but it takes the advent of the rain to catalyze that strong happy odour, a smell marking change, a wetness redefining green and your eyes close unconsciously as you sniff with a deep breath and a heaving chest and the smell permeates and fills up your senses.

And can a stronger, better and unparalleled smell exist than that of a mother? An infant sleeping peacefully, cuddled in the safety of her embrace; her touch and scent an invisible layer of protection. You don’t need to turn around to know she is there; her clothes bear elaborately that cognitive, distinct Motherly smell and the presence of it lingers like a taken for granted comfortable acceptance; an acceptance which didn't need any accepting.

Then there are the myriad confusing smells of spices, the intoxicating fragrance of the rose, the salty smell of the sea, the pungent odour of sweat, the eggy smell of a freshly baked cake, the reeking of dried blood, the stench of death, the raw carnal smell oozing from the wild sensations of passionately intertwined bodies. We all have a realization of these smells but Leela, the protagonist of this novel envisages that her olfactory senses go beyond the normal. She has been displaced to her uncle’s house in France, abandoned by her mother due to the untimely death of her father in Nigeria, where she belonged.

Her life changes immensely as she is trying to come to terms with the acerbic tone of her aunt and her new lessons in cooking (which would be an integral attribute in her life later), when an untoward incident forces her to run away from the only family she knows in France, that of her uncle and aunt’s.

“I had rather be a whore than return back there”, she proclaims.

Her only friend Lotti comes as a guardian angel to her rescue and fixes her up with a female model for sharing a room. Once with Maeve, the model, Leela conveniently forgets Lotti. A few months later, when Maeve can’t accommodate her due to personal reasons, she shows the way for Leela to be au pair for the Baleine’s and their two growing children. Once comfortable with the family, she readily gives herself to Bruno (Mr. Baleine) and dreams of him forsaking his wife for her. And this doesn't last for long as she ultimately realizes that her placement at the Baleine’s was scripted since Bruno had a penchant for exotic females. Out of the Baleine’s family and she dives straight into the arms of Philippe Lavalle, a tycoon in the food business, a Casanova known to play and fiddle with beauties and dump them at will; she wants to be famous with him as the stepping stone. Her newly found friend Olivier, who likes her, has warned her against him but she has this penchant of abandoning well wishers and conveniently forgetting their favors in hard times; maybe this feeling was absorbed from her abandoning by her mother. From one male to other, she chooses and allows herself be used and abused and she wants people to be feel sorry for her sorry state. She keeps Philippe Lavalle mused by describing to him the various smells emanating from his body, during the wild love making and otherwise and when she fails to entice him anymore, he throws her out of his life like clearing a speck of dirt from his shirt.

Almost throughout the book, you hunt for a connection to smell, you seek to discover the extraordinary olfactory sense of Leela, but you realize you are toyed around with and the only unobvious premise you are presented is Leela’s disturbing discovery of a strange unpleasant smell within herself which she is afraid will get exposed to others and will render her unacceptable and she is turning crazy in bits because of this made up fear. In the end, it is a stranger, a ventriloquist who makes her realize that there is no smell, it is just a self created veil against which she prefers hiding and has now found comfort in and how important it is for her to drive away that fear from her mind which permits others to strike heavily and disgracefully on this vulnerability of not being accepted.

The writing appears subdued to a great extent and lacks passion. The author implicitly wants us to sympathize with Leela’s naivete and vulnerability but the want to do so lacks merit when the character is so thankless, selfish and unconcerned. It seemed like Radhika Jha had a mouth watering delicious dish in mind but she somehow what is finally presented is a bland assortment on your hungry plate.

My Rating : * * * * * * * * * * - 4/10

Radhika Jha