Scent from yesteryears

One of the first wedding from my memory was of one of my elder cousins. At that time I was 6 years old. I remember entering the wedding venue. The venue was vibrant. The decor was of bright coloured lights and flowy backdrops. It was simple but elegant.

I remember entering the venue and I smelt a unique fragrance. It was mild but pleasant. It felt as if the entire venue had been showered in that ethereal fragrance. I was curious to find out where it was coming from. I looked around and I did not see anybody spraying a perfume. My curiosity and confusion was quickly noted by my mother, "look there. Do you see a fan like instrument? It is that instrument which is spraying a mist of perfume. It is one of the kind gestures towards the guest. The guests get covered in the perfume and the entire venue smells like a festival".

This was the first time I had seen a contraptions that had capacity to rotate like a table fan and spray perfume simultaneously. I was amazed. I could not describe in words how impressed I was of that device.

After that whenever I would go to any wedding I would always look for that device. In some weddings I was able to see it whereas in others that device was not the part of the venue. When I asked my parents they told me that renting of the device is expensive and only the wealthy families could afford them. This is when I realised that not all weddings are the same. At attended age of 8 I had received an important lesson about the disparity of income and wealth.

Yet finding the perfume spraying device in the weddings had always become a fascination for me. Even as a teenager any wedding I would attend I would always look for that device. The presence of that device during the wedding would tell me a story about the financial capacity of the families.

Later seeing that device felt like meeting an old friend. Whenever in weddings I would see that spraying device I would feel comfortable as if I was in a company of someone I trusted. The weddings where the spring device would not be at the venue I would feel as if the wedding had been without a warmth.

As the time changed the devices used within the weddings also continued to change. When I was in my 20s, I had been rarely seeing the spraying device in the weddings. Most weddings had been avoiding the spraying device because a lot of people had been complaining that the fragrance of perfume had been strong. Some people would also complain about the allergic reactions they had got because of the spraying device. Seeing that device became rare in the weddings. I would still seek the comfort from that device and would still search for it. However it had been crossed off from the list of most weddings.

Recently I went to a wedding. After almost 15 years I saw the perfume spraying device again at that wedding. The nostalgia that hit after seeing that device was something that I cannot describe. The happiness of seeing an artefact from my childhood was beyond words. That wedding felt like I was back to my childhood, being 6 years old, and seeing the fan for the very first time.

Needless to say it was a memorable wedding.