Project Odorator

Today I seriously feel the shortcoming of the medium of internet. The inability to transmit and sample odor. Our gardener, Mr. Pearlbell, (Muthumani) descended on the household with some bags and a huge spray gun this evening. He mixed a seriously deadly looking combination, the contents of which were supposed to be, "Poonga" leaf powder, Neem leaf powder, "Erukkam" leaf powder, cow dung, cow pee, milk and ghee. He then sprayed 20 litres of this mix over the entire garden. The smell was something that I can never convey in its entire glory, try as I might.

I am a creature born on the banks of arguably the smelliest waterway in the world, and so I am no stranger to odor. We South Indians, remove our polyester shirts after a hard, sweaty day at work, take a proper shower in phenomenally chlorinated water using soaps like Lifebuoy and Hamam (made using blotting paper, foaming agent and powdered bricks), then apply Ponds powder and wear the same shirt again. We do this because we think that shirts are so expensive that we need to make what we have last for atleast a few years. Besides the smell of saturated Ponds and dried sweat on polyester is a known anti-mosquito agent.

But this leaf-protecting spray is something else. I remember in the days of early school, I was forced to attend music class. I was forced to take a cycle-rickshaw driven by a chap called Ko-Ball. This guy never bathed, never shaved, never changed clothes and never got sober. And I used to be downwind from him all the way to the music class and back. This garden spray brought back all those memories with a psychedelic twist, and then some.

Imagine bottling up this spray in a pressurized container. Everytime we pass an auto-rickshaw we can spray some on the driver. We can spray bus drivers, foul-mouthing government servants. We can fill up balloons and drop them inside cop cars after we pay them their bribe. We can actually up the ante by bursting a few balloons inside a public lavatory.

I don't think I have just a product, I think I have an entire product category.