The Nose Always Knows
By Shashi Tharoor
Newsweek International
July 11, 2005

My friend Sudhir is a refined, Brahmin-like fellow. He showers twice a day, sprinkles talcum powder on his toes and boasts an exaltedly delicate nose through which he ostentatiously sniffs, every few minutes, in appreciation or disdain. The last time we met he took an especially long sniff and proclaimed: "New York is the odor capital of the world!"

Forget patriotism, Brooklynese or the New York Yankees. If there is such a thing as a unifying New York culture, it's shared olfactory experience. That's because we New Yorkers all live cheek by jowl in crowded high-rises, Sudhir explained. Walk out of your apartment and into the hallway, and you're greeted by the smell of frying bacon wafting from under a neighbor's door. Steps away, the family from Hong Kong is stir-frying garlic. The aroma of your own curry-and-masala dinner only adds to the pungent stew.

But you find that in any big city, I objected. What's so special about New York? "Proportion and variety," my friend gravely replied. "Few cities have quite so large a percentage of their citizens living in packed high-rises. Maybe Hong Kong, but they're pretty much all Chinese. New York has immigrants from all over. No other city can approach the diversity of New York kitchens."

"Fair enough," I conceded. "But what about outdoors? New York's a lot less smelly than the cities in India."

"Not so!" said Sudhir. "In tropical countries everything smells, but the smells all merge into one another. New York has a range of distinctive odors unmatched, I am sure, in the world." And with that, he dragged me out onto the streets of midtown Manhattan.

It had just rained, and I half-expected that washed-clean smell that follows a shower. But Sudhir knew better. The diner at the corner had tossed its garbage out onto the curb in black plastic bags, at least one of which had burst, releasing unmistakable evidence of advanced putrefaction. A few paces farther, rainwater and a blocked drain sent a refulgent blackish liquid onto the sidewalk from the sewer. At the corner a sanitation truck paused on its rounds, and Sudhir made sure we stopped near its open hatch to breathe in refuse gone bad.

"OK," I said weakly, "I get the point."

"Not yet," he said. "That's New York, but what about New Yorkers?"

He pushed his way into the throngs emerging from Grand Central Station. As office workers washed past, we were assaulted by fragrances of every kind, from floral to chemical--not to mention the product of the human sweat gland. Outside, Sudhir motioned toward a bearded homeless man. "Give him a dollar," he instructed, "but bend over him when you do so." In India the homeless bathe at the hydrants; my nose confirmed that you can't do that when you're living on the streets in New York.

It turns out that Sudhir isn't alone. When the city started a hot line for civic problems just over a year and a half ago, the mayor's office counted more than 12,000 odor-related complaints in 311's first 18 months of operation. "That's New York," Sudhir says proudly. "Who else can make scents of it?"