SaidNoopur

I’ve carried this scent with me since I was an infant.

I couldn’t tell you what it was exactly, I only know how it made me feel. I remember being held in a tight embrace, a deep warmth pressed against my face. It was comforting, somehow. Familiar. I associate it with what I now think of as the scent of the eunuchs.

There’s one moment in particular that lingers. I must’ve been just a baby when my caretaker handed me over to someone, someone I now believe was from the Hijra community. She wore a loose-knit sweater with tiny brown buttons and thread that held it all together. That sweater and the woman held a specific smell I never could put a name on.

I couldn’t describe it to you now, well, not exactly, but when I come across it in passing, it pulls me back instantly. It’s like experiencing a warm breeze on your face on a surprisingly cold day. It is sudden, you don’t know where it came from, you’re just happy that it did. You don’t try to avoid it. You want to hold onto it dearly to make it last longer. Because it’s familiar and kind, and for reasons you can’t explain, it feels like being in the comfort of your home again.

I vividly remember train journeys to my grandmother’s house. Eunuchs would come and go through the compartments. At first, they scared me. I am unsure what it was that made me scared. I wonder if it was their boldness, their booming voices, or their laughter that filled the space like music that didn’t ask for permission. But eventually, I grew curious. I always watched them closely: their dark lipsticks, low-cut blouses, tightly pinned braids or buns, the abnormally large red marking on their foreheads. They looked… unreal.

They clapped their hands, sang aloud, blessed, teased, cursed, and apologised, all in their own distinct ways. Some would stand by me to look at me intently, they’d then pinch my cheeks, or hold my tiny jaw between their thumb and forefinger and gently, well, I also remember not so gently, shake my head. It would make me dizzy for a moment. But every time, they left behind that same scent. And somehow, I grew fond of it.

That scent has followed me through life. I’ll catch it in the folds of a stranger’s sweater on the street, or in the cushions of an old train, and it always makes me smile. Not because I miss something, but because something never left.

The eunuchs of my childhood — loud, soft, strange, familiar — left more than a memory. They framed a part of my earliest understanding of presence, of affection, of warmth, without language. And now, every time that scent returns, I think of them, and I smile. Because that’s what they left behind.

And I hope, in some quiet, invisible way, I’ve done the same for someone else.