Rocks and clay absorb terpenes and other molecules from the atmosphere like sponges, and during hot, dry stretches, desert-like places build up great stores of the compound. They are the freshness in pine, the cool in peppermint, the spice in ginger.
The major components in turpentine and resin, terpenes also put the essence in essential oils. Ultimately, they linked the scent to organic compounds that build up in the atmosphere, including heady-smelling terpenes secreted by plants. In the 1950s and 60s, a pair of Australian mineralogists, Isabel Joy Bear and Richard Grenfell Thomas, set out to discover the source of that piquant perfume. The scent can so tantalize drought-stricken animals that it sets thirsting cattle walking in circles. To Sanjiv Chopra, the Indian-American Harvard Medical School physician and author, the loamy smell of long-awaited rains soaking India’s dry soil is “the scent of life itself.” The earthy essence is strongest when rain quenches dehydrated ground.
And they arrive with a memory-searing scent. In the otherwise dry places that depend on the downpours for most of their annual rainfall, monsoons shape everything from childhood to culture to commerce. Nowhere is rain’s redolence more powerful than at the climatic extremes of the world, home to the most dramatic seasonal storms on Earth.īut nowhere is rain’s redolence more powerful than at the climatic extremes of the world-in India, Southeast Asia, West Africa, and parts of Australia-where great, dry swaths of desert are inundated with the most dramatic seasonal storms on Earth. “Clean but funky,” Thomas Wolfe called the exquisite scent of the American South. In the southeast, frequent squalls leave the damp freshness of a wet pine forest. In the desert of the southwestern United States, rare storms punch the atmosphere with creosote and sage. Ocean rain smells briny like Maine clam flats on a falling tide. It depends on the type of storm, the part of the world where it falls, and the subjective memory of the nose behind the sniff.Ĭity rain smells of steaming asphalt, in contrast to the grassy sweetness of rain in the countryside. So its essence can come off as differently as all the flowers on all the continents-rose-obvious, barely there like a carnation, fleeting as a whiff of orange blossom as your car speeds past the grove. Rain also picks up odors from the molecules it meets. A byproduct of bacteria, geosmin is what gives beets their earthy flavor. Likewise, the familiar, musty odor that rises from streets and storm ponds during a deluge comes from a compound called geosmin. The metallic zing that can fill the air before a summer thunderstorm is from ozone, a molecule formed from the interaction of electrical discharges-in this case from lightning-with oxygen molecules. Most of the villagers there are connected to fragrance in one way or another-from sinewy craftsmen who steam petals over wood fires in hulking copper pots to mothers who roll incense sticks in the shade while their toddlers nap on colorful mats nearby.Īlong with their ancient perfumery, the villagers of Kannauj have inherited a remarkable skill: They can capture the scent of rain.Įvery storm blows in on a scent, or leaves one behind. But today, Kannauj is a hub of a historic perfumery that draws much of the town to the same pursuit. Exactly when attar-making began there, no one is certain archaeologists have unearthed clay distillation pots dating back thousands of years to the ancient Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley. Then and now, Kannauj was the place to fetch the fine scents-jasmine oils, rose waters, the roots of grasses called vetiver, with a bouquet cooling to the nose. Fragrant oils-known in India as attars-had been one of the couple’s great shared passions. For one thing, Jahan never again wore perfume. But he also mourned his queen in much more personal ways. The Taj is Jahan’s grand paean to lost love.
Empress Mumtaz Mahal died in 1631 giving birth to their 13th child. In India’s state of Uttar Pradesh, the village of Kannauj lies a dusty four-hour drive east of the Taj Mahal, the white-marbled wonder built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his third and favorite wife.
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