The Forgotten Sense by Jonas Olofsson

Author:Jonas Olofsson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2025-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Dirty Secrets

The woman at the ice cream counter looks at me skeptically. “Are you really sure you want it?” I nod. “Usually only us Asians enjoy durian ice cream.” I say, somewhat bombastically, that I’m willing to take the risk. I am in Singapore to attend the Organization for Human Brain Mapping conference. One of my best experiences from the trip to Singapore is smell-related: the amazing Flower Dome, a giant flower garden enclosed in a glass dome where amazing smells and colors wash over the visitor. But my worst Singaporean experience also has to do with the sense of smell. Shortly after being seduced by flowers and other plants from all over the world, I stand outside the dome, about to make a big mistake. At the ice cream stand outside the flower garden, I order a cup of ice cream flavored with durian, the stinking fruit, or as it is called in Southeast Asia, the king of fruits. I thank the lady at the counter, grab a plastic spoon and put a big scoop in my mouth. The taste is indescribable. Some say it’s like eating vanilla cream in a sewer. The celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain said that after eating durian fruit, your breath smells like you’d been tongue-kissing your dead grandmother. To me, it feels like the ice cream has been flavored with sweet, floral perfume mixed with a generous dose of fermented herring.

The smell of durian is a good example of how culturally influenced the sense of smell is. The durian fruit is considered a delicacy in parts of Southeast Asia. Yet it is banned on the metro and buses, perhaps partly out of concern for tourists. Is it natural to like the durian fruit? When New York Times Southeast Asia correspondent Thomas Fuller had Thai elephants, known for their keen sense of smell, try the durian fruit, their response was unequivocal. They crushed the melon-sized durian fruit and then devoured every last bit. My own durian experience, however, ended in defeat. I continued to eat my durian ice cream as I strolled around Singapore’s beautiful parks with my colleague. But after a while, a growing nausea set in. Defeated by the durian, I threw about half the ice cream into a garbage can. Hours later, I could still smell the stench of my own breath and remembered Bourdain’s words.

The allure of pheromones has put the spotlight on body odors that arouse desire and stimulate our sex drive. Yet, it sometimes seems that the most common reaction to body odors is forgotten—people stink. Unpleasant body odor comes with a lot of stigma. I recently heard an acquaintance of mine say that she absolutely did not want to recruit a colleague to the workplace because “he stinks!” Unfortunately, discovering if you smell bad is not as easy as you might think. We become numb, losing sensitivity to the smells we are constantly exposed to. Only when we smell new odors do we have full sensitivity. The

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