It has been a week since the second wave of Covid-19 lashed against my family, taking down all three of us (sparing my feline sibling, Kafka) with its typical symptoms like those of a bout of flu, only augmented several times in terms of variety, and severity.
It still strikes me odd how I can distinctly recall the exact time I lost my sense of smell—probably because I was on a call, that I could steal a quick glance at the time. On May the 6th at six minutes past midnight, my olfactory senses went out of service. I realised this while I was smoking a cigarette (I had still not tested positive back then), a flavoured one, that felt like nothing but a wisp of air to me. Panicking a bit, I tried a different flavour, but it was of no use. Nerves kicking in, I hung up the call, and went inside to spray some room freshener on myself. I know it’s a bizarre thing to do, but I was desperate to catch a whiff of that strong lavender that used to fill my room whenever I wanted. Alas, I couldn’t smell a thing. I tried smelling some vaporub, chewed an entire clove-bud, and was finally compelled to arrive at the inevitable conclusion—both my senses of taste and smell were gone.
Nothing to be done. One of the brightest minds in the world advised me to “savour the experience”, to make notes, and whatnot. Now it’s not like I dismissed this suggestion right away, but a few minutes of impatient introspection led me to conclude that deeper reflections, at least mine, were interminably linked with sensation, and the loss of these primal senses seemed to have robbed my mind of coherent thoughts as well. And so, there I was, feeling ridiculous, stupid, and obsessing even more…
Later that day, I bathed using extra soap, facewash, and shampoo—absolutely no aroma. All of it just felt moist, slippery, and disgustingly alike without their distinguishing smell. It was as if even my tactile senses had been numbed rather than heightened by this betrayal of their fellow sensory organs. Stepping out of the shower, I sprayed deo on myself, used my favourite sandalwood attar, but everything smelt of an eerie olfactory silence.
While having lunch with rice and egg curry, I felt as if I were chewing on muck, or wet cotton. I had always despised egg yolks—no matter in what form it came to my plate, but strangely enough, I could eat the yolk of the well-cooked egg today. Soon, the afternoon melted away into dusk, and my warm espresso felt like lukewarm water. The chili-potato nuggets I so love(d) felt like deep-fried polystyrene foam. I had tried the room freshener on me once again, but without any luck.
Although it had only been a day, I tried making the most out of this experience, but try as I might -there was nothing even unique about it, let alone exotic. One just felt an eerie stillness in the air—the air they couldn’t smell, couldn’t taste. It felt as if there were this book lying open in front of me, and I was able to read it, but couldn’t make out a thing. Soon, I began to doubt my surroundings. It felt as if I had gotten this intense FOMO, this fear of missing out and had already begun to give up on my remaining sense organs. Perhaps I couldn’t hear or feel things that were going on around me either. Who knew?
Inhaling steam is recommended by every second person when they discover you’re covid-struck. I enjoy taking steam anyway—so, that night, I mixed this green gelatinous capsule with the steaming water I was supposed to use, but it only felt like bland old vapour. And worse, now I couldn’t even recall what that capsule smelt like.
See, this is my problem. I cannot retain smell or taste even in my memory. Images? Yes. Textures? Yes. But those of olfaction and gustation have always been a major let-down, that is the reason I’ve never experienced either of those in my dreams. So, they’re not independent memories—for me, they can only be recollected through association.
I was afraid. If this went on, I feared I’d probably not remember the fact that petrol and coffee had different aromas—and how dear both were to me. Given a choice to keep any one of the olfactory or gustatory senses, I would definitely pick the former to keep with me forever. They say half our hunger is satiated through smell alone—and if I couldn’t smell the very thing I was consuming, then the whole act was rendered pointless.
One night, I rose from bed, and wasted an entire bar of Crispello that felt like a mixture of cement-gravel-stone chips one might want to consider for constructing a garden path. My life seemed to have been a series of dominoes ever since all this had started, felling all that I loved one by one—my daily “walkies” and training, my regular routine of work, my love for chilled water, my perverse habit of smoking—all gone.
Thinking of my miserable fate, I took a spoonful khichdi that felt like soiled bird food. All I was left with was my ability to perceive heat and cold. I was pretty sure that this too would be taken away by this blasted virus. Often, I would sit and contemplate—nothing really smelled or tasted of anything, and that aroma or taste were merely social constructs invented to glorify our useless noses and tongues.
A couple of days later, I tested positive, and my medication started. There was this amazeballs suck-able vitamin C tablet that I couldn’t get enough of, and although I couldn’t make out its exact flavour, I was pretty sure it was awesome. But it was acidic, tangy, and… well, one couldn’t really tell, since pungency isn’t a taste. But I swore I’d hoard some twenty-odd bubble packs of this vitamin C tablet once/if I’d come around, and pop a pill every now and then, until I turned fully orange and then wait for Willy Wonka and his Oompa-loompas to take me in.
The other night, I pulled out a small bottle of chilled water from the refrigerator, and placed it next to me on my bed. Then, I had a few sips. It felt like making out with an auld ex after decades. Dripping with guilt, I put the bottle back to the fridge, and found a bar of milk chocolate. I chomped on it, and it took me back to pre-school, when I was always chewing on erasers (the “non-dust” kind, you know, with those cyan-and-white wrappers). Ask me not whether I would swallow those, for that piece of memory’s conveniently erased from my system.
Anyway, the weekend is over, and today, I went back to work (from home) thinking things would be a little better. It was naïve of me.
A severe body-ache kicked in from simply working with the lappie, and I was utterly exhausted by the day’s end. As if I had contracted some sort of full-body arthritis.
Now, I have been way luckier than an overwhelming majority in my brush with the disease. But even for those who have escaped its severities, an encounter with Covid-19 is never easy to tackle. And not least because it tends to blur the lines between the physical and the mental health with a single filter of trauma.
When I think of it, I realise that this disease wrings your body and mind and leaves you completely drained—you can’t even rest in peace. Let alone your senses of taste or smell, even your sanity feels like an add-on you used to possess in the distant past that has been sharply withdrawn all of a sudden.
I guess, I have arrived at some sort of a negotiation, or settlement with my situation—and accepted the fact that the Anosmia-Ageusia twins lodged in my system are here to stay at least for the coming few weeks, if not more. I don’t complain anymore, for that’s what we humans do—we adapt, and we survive.