Boo Taboo

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Boo in Urdu means smell or odor. We are more familiar with urdu words like “Khushboo and “Budboo” which imply good and bad odor respectively. As per my PC dictionary smell or odour  can be defined as “ The sensation that results when olfactory receptors in the nose are stimulated by particular chemicals in gaseous form”. The English words "Smell" or "odor", are essentially neutral - not signifying good or bad. A pleasant smell, in English, may be called fragrance, aroma scent etc depending on the source. The unpleasant or offensive types are generally referred to as stink / stench or generally speaking malodour. To the best of my knowledge, so far no gadget, machine or equipment has been created that can identify and record the varieties and intensity of a particular smell. Every organic material invariably has a specific identifiable odor and hence it can be categorized. Each species of plant has a distinct smell in its stem, its leaf, its flower and its fruits. It can be easily said that the variety would run into thousands . In fact very few materials that we have on the surface of this earth is absolutely “odorless”. Few common examples are air and water; inert materials such as gold and silver etc. with the exception of the components of air; namely Oxygen. Hydrogen, Nitrogen and Carbon Dioxide all common gasses have some pungent smell as a forewarning for inhaling them. Amongst the liquids, I have yet to come across anything that is as odorless as water.

Why every organic material has been provided with a distinctive smell by nature and what purpose do they serve? Honestly speaking I am not learned enough to know the answer. In fact compared to other senses, smell is the least researched area. They say if you clip your nose and eat apple and pear, both of them will taste almost the same. So the smell of an edible item helps in arriving at its taste is understandable.

In a country like ours, after months of scorching heat when the first drops of rain hit the earthen soil, it releases a scent which is incomparable in terms of pleasantness and the feel-good factor it generates. The reason is not too far to be fetched. This smell is the signal of end of famine and beginning of life with harbinger of fresh vegetation  and therefore survival itself. This smell has been registered by human brain over thousands of years. My guess is that this particular scent cannot be generated artificially in any perfume factory, at any cost. The water is odorless and so is the soil (almost) but when the two come in contact with one another this magic is created – that too without any chemical reaction. Surprisingly, after a couple of showers, this magical effect  virtually vanishes, even as the materials practically remain the same.

With the changing times we have forgotten to savour the suttle flavor of drinking water from the earhten pot in summer and instead are having it from plastic bottles releasing toxicity within "human tolerable limits". Dont Worry; Be Happy

We have studied in elementary botany books that flowers have very pleasant fragrance essentially to attract insects which helps in pollination and thus the propagation of their species goes on. The primary “purpose” of every living being is its regeneration (comes after the basic instinct of survival). So if a particular plant manages to do it through the fragrance of its flowers, it is quite understandable – no big deal.

By itself human sweat, secreted by sweat glands under the skin,  is basically water with salt content and may be a few other minerals and therefore is odorless like sea water. When this sweat comes in contact with the micro organisms residing on our skin (there are millions of them on each square inch) they produce the smell what we call body odor, which in implication, is equivalent to stench.

I recall an anecdote told to me by my elder brother when we were once discussing on the subject of boo. Even as I forget the name of the character, let me make it clear it is not  fictitious. A young world class soccer player (probably from a European country), being exceptionally good looking had a real huge fan following among young girls who would swear to get orgasms when he smiled on the large TV screen in a  soccer stadium. Thousands of such girls had got his name tattooed over different parts of their bodies. He was a craze. While playing one of his matches, when heavy action shifted to the other side of the field, this fellow thought all the camera’s would be focused away from him where some serious tussle over the ball was going on, he did this unthinkable act. He put his hand inside his jersey and rubbed his armpits and then took his hand out to get back to his normal posture. A few more seconds passed and now he brings those fingers to his nose under the pretext of wiping the sweat and takes a good account of the smell he wanted to have. Unfortunately for him one of the powerful cameras on the field, captured every minute detail of his action. Later on for a full day the TV channels were replaying the entire action in a magnified form. Thousands of young girls were heart broken. “Gross”, “Gross” they shouted on the Street TV interviews with genuine tears in their eyes and voice choked with emotion. One such girl actually vomited out of disgust. For the time being their romantic world seemed to be shattered as if the player was caught making love to a pet. They all thought his action was as gross. Well I wont really blame them for the reaction. They have been taught like that. May be over generations. They have been tutored that deodorants are pleasant and sexy and armpit odor is filthy and gross. This has become a firm belief. It is beyond them to think on the contrary. Brainwashing is almost complete.

Have we not heard of certain boys who get maximum sexual arousal out of smelling the inner garments of ladies left inside the toilet. We call them kinky. In other words it is considered not normal. Among humans, sexual arousal through olfactory system is a taboo in so called sophisticated circles.

As the pregnancy of a woman moves to an advanced stage, her olfactory system not only gets enhanced manifold but also the body odor of the same loving husband appears to be highly repulsive to such an extent that even close contact becomes intolerable. The odor of the female in the advanced stage of pregnancy becomes offensive to reduce the attraction of the female to the loving husband; more so for those who have compulsive obsession for Y dining.  These are nature’s ways to keep the couple from further adventures in that stage of pregnancy. At this juncture survival of the foetus gets a higher priority over the desire of re-generation in the normal course.  May be concept of  higher level of hygene is thus inculcated through intensified smell receptors.  

For obvious reasons i may not be knowing much about pregnancies but a little wisdom i have acquired to understand that each and every thing which the nature conceives has a specific purpose which is for the overall good of the species concerned in general. Instead of abject submission to the ways of nature, we often question them realising very little that our brains have extremely limited abilities whereas nature is ultimate.

A police dog chases the culprit purely on the strength of his body odor released under "frightened" conditions. Most carnivorous animals particularly nocturnal marine predators have very weak eyesight and are able to beat their prey with powerful smelling capabilities. On the other hand some of the target animals on sight of an attack release such repulsive odor that the predator decides not to go for the hunt altogether. In short, most activities of animals are largely guided by the sense of smell. Entire book can be written on this relationship. Only human beings have undermined this powerful sensory perception on the pretext of being rational being. The problem is this rationalisation is being inbibed from artifical environment created by the commercial machinery.

A friend of mine told me an anecdote as he read somewhere that in the biography of one of the earlier Nawabs. That fucker (the Nawab I mean) was having dozens of concubines each given a different haveli to stay. Depending on his whims and fancy, when he wished to spend a night with any one of them he would send the message of his arrival a couple of days in advance with directive to the lady under consideration not to take a bath till they met. These facts are difficult to be verified but I have reasons to believe it. For the Nawab, the intensity of the body odor was the distinguishing feature. Rest of the things amongst the concubines cannot be imagined to be of any basic difference, considering that all of them must be young and charming. Every human being on the surface of earth has a few features that makes him unique in his own way. They apparent ones are (i) finger prints, (ii) face features combined, (iii) voice and (iv) body odor. Rest of the things cannot be categorized as so distinctive. For the Nawab Saheb, in moments of intimacy, the first three attributes didn’t really matter. Who would be interested in listening to a song when the tornado hits. If all of them proved to be virtually similar, what is the big fun in maintaining a harem? Might as well remain monogamous.

The generation that has emerged, religiously believes in deodorant  (deo in short). Deos remove body odor and replace it with perfumery of your choice. Deo is essentially some perfumed chemical which coming in contact with the skin kills (or deactivates?) the micro organisms so that they are not able to react with the sweat and that’s how the stench produced is obviated. These days they advertise of deo that keeps you fresh for 12 hours. Such claims may be true as they just have to produce germicides that does not allow to grow back on the skin for 12 hours. In order to capture the market, few deo companies pushed their product as a magic potion “irresistible” for women. The ad promises that if you put on this doe, no woman young or old, cute or ugly will be able to control her sexual desire and may be mobbed by them seeking sexual gratification. Whether the product works as promised or not I don’t know; but the add has worked. I see more and more such ads on TV these days. These commercials have done very well for the deo manufacturer, the ad agency as well as the media. Who wouldn’t like to be mobbed like that and if you are frugal in using the expensive spray, may be only one or two of them will be tempted to rape you in the lift. Thus even if the propaganda is exaggerated, in the mildest of forms, the result could be like  the ultimate male sexual fantasy. For such results, whole lot of people can spend a fortune. It all started in 1920 in America when sythetic perfumes were marketed for the first time and since then there is not going back. Brainwashing has grown like anything. We have grown less tolerant to the natural phenomena.

A teenager's socks smells (stinks?) like  rotton cheese. After he reaches 50 this smells gradually dies down. What a relief!!. They say. I sometimes wonder that during the ageing process (after say 25), when ALL body functions only downslide, how come this particular aspect shifts towards"improvement"?. Actually our perceptions are not correct. I am not suggesting that rotton socks smell is to be relished. May be its for the purpose to indicate that enough bacteria have grown and it required a wash. Wearing shoes and socks in a tropical climate itself is highly questionable.   

Why Kiss? Lip kissing is probably is the most common foreplay technique known to man. I don’t think any animal does it though they may rub necks or .. oh forget animals else I may be branded with dirty mind. In western societies kissing is also a social practice held between family members and friends of the opposite gender. Between lovers 95 % of the times it is between lips. So why not kiss a close friends wife on the lips ? or your own mother? What difference does it make? How lips and cheeks can make such a big difference? Well the real question is what makes kissing on the lips so attractive and erotically arousing? We keep on kissing without analyzing why lip kissing is so bloody exciting and in what way it is so different from cheeks or forehead ?.  Some say it has to be mutual.

Difficult to get a convincing answer. So I evolved my own hypothesis. Instead of giving you a direct answer may I ask you to rub your finger on the lower side of your nose where the nose meets the cheek. Do it vigorously for just 5 seconds and just smell it. Sorry if it doesn’t smell like a perfume on your dressing table. If it smells nothing - sure sign you have become too old. It is difficult to give names to particular smell so let me put it bluntly; it smells of sex. This also happens when corners of the lips with dried up saliva is rubbed. In case of kissing, I am of firm opinion that clubbed with the sense of touch, it is the olfactory attraction which brings major portion of pleasure. Vision is almost blurred and therefore has negligible role to play here. So the next time you see Amir Khan touching this nose or someone wiping/ touching the corner of his/her lips you would understand what is going on and what is working behind this habbit.

Just like eating a sumptuous dinner, in sex also all the five senses are involved i.e. vision, hearing, smell taste and touch. So if someone gets to making love to Scarlette Johansson and his nose is blocked, its akin to eating apple with the nose clipped.

The way the entire world is moving away from odors of nature to synthetic ones is a massive propaganda campaign by manufacturers of artificial perfumes. Some may ask “so whats the harm if I like it that way?. I’ll say no harm baby. Only humans will be moving away from nature like they are doing in so many other ways and mother nature never appreciates that. Gay activities and even marriage will become rampant as male to male otherwise repulsive smell will be smothered with some artifical fragrance. How will it make a difference whether one is eating peach or apple. The world has already shifted in a big way towards kinky sex ‘cos normal 5 senses wala sex no more gives them the kick and ecstasy which their basic instinct demands, it should.

Nature has taken care to tell what is real repulsive stench. a rotten piece of meat or fish gives clear signal of being rotton and not to be consumed. Taking a bath is natural way of regulating excess odor that becomes unbearable even for a lover. The excreta has a natural repulsive stink and tell us to be away from it. You have to keep away from it rather than be there and sprinkle DDT or flush it out through the city drains. Let it be recycled in the most natural manner. 

With evolution of species, every natural odor has developed for a particular purpose and has a role to play. We may or may not understand the full implications. What has evolved over a million  years, we are trying to distort within a few decades. That is too fast. If we try to fiddle with this natural process sky will not fall in the short run but it will not be too desirable for the planet in general. All we have to keep in mind is that Nature is the ultimate yardstick.

Things are chaging too fast for nature to handle. Like the natural aroma and flavor in vegetables and poultry items developed over thousands of years, has virtually vanished within a short span of 3-4 decades, the day is not far when some way would be found for our farts to smell like vanilla icecream (choose your flavor) and we would not be able to tell when have we overeaten.

There are Khushboos to be relished and Budboos to be avoided. How to distinguish which is what? Let your "open" mind be guided and taught by your own instinct rather than by a TV commercial. Remember, they are selling - but you have to pay for it!

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Epilogue: I could have said all this without this strange sounding caption Boo. All I had to say  would have remained the same even without that urdu word. Well there was a short story by the same caption that was written some 40 years ago. The author is one Sadaat Hassan Manto. He was a kind of prodigy in Urdu literature. He was born ahead of his times. The sexual revolution across the world had then not happened. His short stories revolved around the subject of sex more often than not. Even as he was a genius and considered one of the finest short story writers,,, after he migrated to Pakistan, he had to defend half a dozen court cases filed against him on the charges of obscenity. A short story titled “Boo” was one of them.