My descent into India in June began easily, with the usual green seatbelt sign and slow change in air pressure. But as the plane pulled through fog, I felt coils of anticipation tighten inside me. This was a homecoming to an unknown but familiar origin, a mythical place of bedtime stories that my dad told me when I was tucked into pink floral bedsheets. I caught glimpses throughout the house: Amartya Sen and Salman Rushdie on the bookshelves, a bronze Shiva on the fireplace mantel, Buddha in a candle-holder in the basement, block-printed tablecloths, pillows, and picnic blankets that accumulated every time he visited my grandmother in Bangladesh. Black-and-white photos of my dad and uncle in school uniforms from their time in Bangalore circled my mind, about to gain clarity and color.

Meanwhile, gray clouds from the upper atmosphere kept changing, growing deeper and darker and warmer, an orange tint of pollution creeping up the scratched plastic Virgin Atlantic window.  Nose glued to the window, I searched in the mist for the familiar small buildings marking descent. Instead, a neon green slime started to come down the window in torrents, and orange fog continued to cloud my vision. I later learned the name of the green liquid—Type IV anti-icing fluid—but at the time it played out like an apocalyptic Halloween colored sequence. This did not incite bedtime stories from my childhood, but a more uncertain reality. Crossing the jetbridge, I breathed in the smell of far-away fire, of burning gasoline and crops and trash. I used to associate the scent with my grandmother’s Dhaka apartment and the suitcase of goodies my dad would open the second he got home. The burning and the jolting of the van on the way to the university made me nauseous. I glanced at a hazy mural on the side of the road. A blue-and-green globe. “Nature provides for need, but not for greed.” Mahatma Gandhi. The place wrapped in a mental mist for most of my life still seemed incomprehensible and contradictory, even with feet on the ground.

The six weeks that followed continued a story I’ve known for years, one I’m still trying to piece together. I traveled all over the city of Bangalore and the country. A quick stop at the Taj Mahal. A fever dream of hospitality and beautiful nature scenes in Coorg. Colorful boats and dancing in Chennai, listening to expats speak quick French in Pondicherry. I took pictures at all my dad’s recommendations from fifty-some years ago. His houses no longer existed, now apartment buildings and fast-food places. I visited his boarding school and watched pre-teens play cricket, seeing my relatives in these spaces so far from our now-homes. I lived in university dorms and went on walks around campus, finding my own favorite spots to walk, eat, and live. I imagined showing my dad around one day. 

For class, I visited several farms, sampling cucumbers and bananas and milk while speaking with farmers and scientists. On the road, I listened to Billy Strings and Sierra Ferrell and Bob Dylan as the hills, covered with bright clay houses and metallic structures, rolled by. I immortalized them in my mind, scenes of everyday life that I would probably never see again. The colorful shipping trucks, personalized to each driver, were my favorite part. They reminded me of how I used to press my nose against the window every Christmas while driving to see my mom’s family. I studied each driver outside of the nameless, gray ribbed metal structures. Here, the trucks screamed personality—goddesses and flowers and exclamations of “HORN, PLEASE!”

While the smell of burning slowly approached me until I became numb to it, the horns never left my mind. On Thursdays, the bar across the street hosted karaoke nights. The beat from Bollywood tracks blended with the incessant beeping of horns and wafted through my open window. I would lie in bed and stare as the fan went thump-thump-thump-thump in front of me. The pitched horns blended into each other, and an endless stream of oscillating sound. My first night, I mistook the rhythmic pulsations of the fan for the tabla, the traffic horns for the sitar. As the ragas and country music of my childhood came back to me, I tried to discern what music was real and what I constructed from fragmented recollections. Home and reality began to blend. I found myself slipping away from what I thought I knew, losing myself in the world of pretend. 

After a few days, the trance of the music and colors and memories started to fade. The air lost its novelty, the smell of burning dissipating into background noise. The only reminder of its difference was the slightly damp, moldy quality of the air I felt when breathing. I am always surprised at how quickly humans can adapt.

My descent back into America happened quickly: I didn’t sleep the entire day before so I could fall asleep on the plane, and was still groggy-eyed when I stepped off the jet bridge. I watched dark orange smoke from the Canadian wildfires choke the landscape through the floor-to-ceiling windows of JFK. I felt the pang of a familiar burning smell, one that used to signify a place of another. In India, my own reality morphed and shifted into a new normal. The memories of my dad’s memories that I brought to the place still existed, but grew with my own experience. The gap between the two lessened. Before, I faced a world I barely knew. I grew to understand it and adapt it as my own. 

The smell of fire has since migrated from the atmosphere to my mind. I sense it in the occasional story in the Times featuring burning woods, hazy pink atmospheres over cities. Photo highlights on my phone. My duffel bag that traveled around the country, sitting on the windowsill. And the next time the nutty, nauseating smell of far-off burning fully enters my senses, I will think of home.

Lily Williams-Ameen finds meaning in olfactory linkages, even seas apart. Scent… they’re calling it the Fifth Sense.