Transported by Smoke
“Apocalyptic” and “emergency crisis” are two of the phrases being used to describe the air quality blanketing much of the northeast United States right now as a result of the widespread Canadian wildfires that continue to burn and blow across our shared border.
Earlier today, my wife texted me from her office just a few miles away and asked if I wanted to close the windows in our house where I work, and turn on the air conditioning. At seven and a half months pregnant and no stranger to feeling the kicks from whomever it is I'm carrying, my immediate answer should have been a knee jerk "yes, great idea!" But it wasn't. Instead, I snapped a picture of the reddish orange sun peeking through the skylight in my home office and sent it back to her. "It's kind of smoky here. I'm not really bothered by it," my reply message read.
And I'm not. I'm actually kind of humbled by the smoky air and its ability to transport me back in time to 2014 when I stepped off a plane in rural India and was overwhelmed by the same - albeit stronger smell - that was wafting through the breezy pillars of the postage stamp-sized airport on the southwestern region of the Konkan coast. Driving to the hotel in Goa, a beach town with enduring Portuguese influence, my own travel-induced haze was matched by the warm, unfamiliar air wafting through the windows of the car being driven by someone that my friends hired while I was airborne.
Overwhelming and alarming to my western sensibilities, the smoke was an ever-present detail of the landscape in India, just like the many cows lounging in the street, casually strolling with traffic or defiantly laying on the medians. The smoke, I quickly learned, was man-made: when there was garbage to take out or meals to prepare, both were tossed to the flames wherever space allowed. I acclimated quickly, got used to the constant smell and common practice of living with smoke and not too many hours after I landed in India, I embraced it. This was a part of life here.
Almost a decade later and back in the United States, smoke-filled skies that have sent many in search of their N95 masks from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, is not part of everyday life. And I know that. And so I will close my windows and turn on the AC, but not before I let my sense of smell bring me back to a different place, a different time.
