Smell of nostalgia

Have you ever walked down a modern city street, a narrow lane perhaps, and smelt a bad pipe, a damaged sewer, an instead of your nose curling and shrinking, you are transported to ....

fresh durians being cut open
sweat on the back of your cotton shirt
a river that is the wash room, the playground, the sewer
throwing buckets of cold water instead of a shower
mango fibres between your teeth
listening to thunder shake the grey sky and lightening crack the heat
loud cicadas against the hum of an ineffective ceiling fan
lizards that run on stone walls
the morning ritual of hearing spitting and hoiking through open windowed bathrooms
dodging fat heavy raindrops that hurt your skin
lying under a mosquito net, listening to that sound, that sound
watching shy grass curl at your touch
eating satay from a road side seller
driving in monsoonal puddles that washes well over the car bonnet and onto the windscreen
stepping over blood in a wet market
in a traffic jam watching the goats on the roadside verge
watching barefoot children in identical uniforms laugh their way homes

and just for a moment, you are "home".

For all the ex-tropic TCKs.