There are some memories I cannot deliberately recall.

I can sit and think about my childhood and nothing particularly specific comes to mind.

Then one day, completely unexpectedly, I smell something.

And suddenly I am there.

Not remembering.

There.

Back in a particular house.

A particular room.

A particular afternoon.

It is one of the strangest things about memory.

A SMELL DOESN'T ASK PERMISSION

Music can remind you of a period of your life.

A photograph can make you remember a person.

A place can bring back an old experience.

But smell feels different.

You don't have to sit there and think about the past.

It simply arrives.

One second you are standing somewhere in the present.

The next, something from twenty years ago has appeared in your mind.

THE SMELL OF HOME

I think every childhood home has its own smell.

Not necessarily a beautiful one.

Just a particular combination of things.

Furniture.

Cooking.

Soap.

Clothes.

Books.

Dust.

Paint.

Maybe the smell of a particular room.

When you are young, you don't notice it.

You simply think that is what home smells like.

Years later, you smell something similar somewhere else and suddenly you realise that you haven't experienced that smell in years.

FOOD IS PROBABLY THE STRONGEST

Food has an almost unfair ability to bring back memories.

A particular dish your mother used to make.

Something your grandmother cooked.

The smell of breakfast.

A particular sweet.

Tea.

Spices.

Something you haven't eaten in years.

The strange thing is that sometimes you don't even particularly like the food anymore.

But the smell still means something.

Because you aren't remembering the food.

You are remembering the person who made it.

RAIN

Rain has its own category.

Especially the smell after a long hot summer.

Wet roads.

Soil.

Concrete.

Trees.

The smell of the air changing.

I think everyone has a version of rain attached to their childhood.

Maybe school.

Maybe monsoon holidays.

Maybe sitting near a window.

Maybe getting completely soaked while coming home.

The smell itself becomes attached to the feeling.

PETROL STATIONS

This one is strange, but I have always associated the smell of petrol with travel.

Maybe because fuel stations often meant that we were going somewhere.

A road trip.

A long drive.

Stopping somewhere before continuing.

Even now, a certain smell of petrol can immediately create that feeling of being on the road.

The destination doesn't even matter.

The journey is what comes back.

OLD BOOKS

Old books have another smell that I find strangely comforting.

Paper.

Dust.

Glue.

Time.

Libraries have their own version of it.

Second hand bookstores have another.

And every time I smell it, I think about how many people have held those pages before me.

Maybe someone read the book fifty years ago.

Maybe they were sitting somewhere completely different.

Maybe they underlined the same sentence.

The smell becomes another kind of history.

WE DON'T KNOW WE ARE MAKING MEMORIES

This is probably the part I find saddest.

When you are a child, you don't know which moments will become important later.

You think childhood is simply happening.

A normal afternoon.

Your mother cooking.

Your father coming home.

A family car.

A particular soap.

The smell of rain.

Someone's perfume.

A particular room.

You have no idea that twenty years later, a completely unrelated smell might suddenly bring that entire world back.

THE THINGS WE NEVER THINK TO PRESERVE

We take photographs of birthdays.

Holidays.

Weddings.

Trips.

Important occasions.

But nobody thinks to preserve the smell of their childhood home.

Nobody records the smell of their mother's kitchen.

Nobody stores the exact smell of the car they grew up travelling in.

Nobody saves the smell of a particular rainy afternoon.

Yet those things can sometimes survive longer in our minds than the photographs do.

MAYBE THAT IS WHY SMELL FEELS SO EMOTIONAL

A photograph shows you what something looked like.

A recording tells you what something sounded like.

But a smell can somehow make you feel like you are back inside the moment.

You don't just see the old room.

You remember how it felt to be the person standing inside it.

THE STRANGE THING ABOUT GROWING UP

As we get older, more and more of those smells disappear.

Houses change.

Products change.

People move.

Recipes change.

Shops close.

Cars disappear.

Certain perfumes stop being made.

Even the smell of a particular place can disappear completely.

And you don't realise it is gone until something reminds you.

I THINK THAT IS WHY CERTAIN SMELLS FEEL LIKE HOME

Maybe home isn't actually a place.

Maybe it is a collection of tiny sensory details.

A smell.

A sound.

A particular kind of light.

Someone's voice from another room.

Food cooking.

Rain outside.

A familiar road.

And perhaps one day, many years from now, I will smell something completely random and suddenly remember a version of my life that I had forgotten existed.

That is the beautiful thing about memory.

We lose pieces of the past without realising it.

And sometimes, something as simple as a smell gives one of them back.