Author: Aness Matloob Aness Matloob

You can be walking through a hotel lobby, passing a bakery, opening an old drawer, or standing in a garden when it happens: a smell hits you, and suddenly you are somewhere else. Maybe it is your grandmother’s kitchen, your first school classroom, a summer holiday, an old apartment, or a person you have not thought about in years. The reaction can be so immediate that it feels less like remembering and more like briefly stepping back into the past. Few senses can trigger memories as quickly or as emotionally as smell. There is a biological reason for this. Smell…