By Rajbir Deswal

Anyone can smell the difference between Milady’s cologne and a bottle of tharra (country made liquor) form Ghaziabad...but to name a town just by the smell of the place with ones eyes closed? Now here’s a challenge. If a Keats were to travel to Delhi from Chandigarh, I don’t doubt that he would prefer to sink down in his seat with a “wake-me-when-ye-get-there” look on his face. But for hardier souls, it’s an interesting experience to be “led by the nose down the GT Road”.

Ready? Here we go. You have hardly left Chandigarh when some nauseating fumes assault your nostrils. You have crossed the Industrial Area and will soon be entering Golden Punjab, land of milk and honey. But your olfactory receptors are teased as you speed over the Ghaggar bridge and beyond. No, the air carried the faint smell of citrus wafted from the acres of kinnow plantation. You’re near Dera Bassi. A few more kilometres down the road and the fragrance of flowers hits you. It’s the Punjab-Haryana border, nicely demarcated with hedges and flowerbeds. Good fences make good neighbours!

Thereafter, many miles will flash past before another distinctive smell is picked up. This will be a very kitcheny-hot oil, frying masaalaas, rotis on the tawa. You must be passing the Ambala bus terminus, home of Puran Singh da Dhaba and innumerable “Chicken Corners”?

After some 15 or 20 more minutes down the road, the traffic slows a bit. Now, concentrate, mingled with the smell of dust and auto fumes, can you make out a whiff of sandalwood, or mongra? Yes, it’s the agarbattis buring at the mazar of Nau Gaza Pir, near Shahbad.

From here up to Pipli-Kurukshetra what you encounter is the unmistakable smell of frothy sugarcane juice at the crushers. As you near halfway mark on your trip to Delhi, you will again and again pick up a smell of husk and grain-dust. If your nose is acute, it’ll recognise the aroma of basmati rice. Shellers nearby have filled the air with the smell of basmati. Welcome to Taraori, where Indian history took a turn.

Here in AD 1191 Mohammad Gauri overwhelmed the forces of the last Hindu King, Prithvi Raj Chauhan, in the Battle of Tarain. You too for your part can question the thoughts of Americans laying siege to the basmati patent-wise will trouble you if you ponder over India’s ancient glory snatched. The smell of cow dung and compost manure soon brings you back to 2001. You have reached Karnal, where the farms of the National Dairy Research Institute and the Wheat Research Institute create a “Smelly Crescent” for you when your vehicle goes round as if via the queen’s necklace.

But then, that dust-cum-agarbatti smell again. This has to be Pukka Pul built by the Moughals and the vast Haryana Armed Police Complex is stretched ahead. Further ahead...”Aha!” The manufacturing unit of a drink with “nothing official about it”.

Could it be Gharonda? It’s, with the historic serais built by Khan Firuz in 18th century. If you were a shepherd, your nose would start to reveal something sheepish in the air. A smell like a large flock of sheep caught in a downpour. Wet wool. This can only be the Manchester of India — Panipat.

This may not be your favourite smell but it seems like perfume in comparison to the acidic fumes that choke the air a few miles down the road. This one comes from furnaces forgoing iron. Heaven help anyone who has to live in Samalkha.

A hint of that Ambala smell returns not long after you leave Samalkha and you can be sure the highway is passing through a corridor of dhabas. Murthal, of course...paranthas and dal fry. Dirty but delicious. Enjoy while you can, because you are only minutes away from a devil’s bouquet compounded of paint, polish, varnish, molasses, rubber, fumes, chemicals and God knows what else. These are, thanks to all the assorted industries that crowed along the road at Rai and Kundli.

And then, that familiar smell, that signals home-coming for the average Indian. The odour of the vast toilet. You are on the outskirt of outer Delhi with its slums, which in turn are ringed by fields which serve as al fresco latrines for a population numbering at least half a million. Delhi sprawls out and out, and vies with Kolkata,Chennai and Mumbai for the title of ‘Shittiest city in the world’. From here on the stench and automotive exhaust will drown out all other sensations. Welcome to the national capital.