Of horses and more

I miss the smell of the horses I used to ride at the crack of dawn years ago. We used to live in a far, very remote and beautiful part of India. I was very young, around 12 years old when I used to wake up around 5:30 am, hike down a hill 2-3 kms, spend a couple of hours riding at this wonderful small club and then go back the distance, take a good well-scrubbed bath (given that you stink after riding a horse or rather I did, I would rather invest my time taking a good bath and therefore even sacrificing my breakfast that Ma would keep ready for me), then get ready and rush to school and almost always make it well before the 9 am assembly. And I forgot to mention that school was another 2-3 kms away and the only way to get there was to walk, or run as was my case. Once, only once, when there was a landslide and I was getting late, I went to school with a quick shower and cannot forget the expression on my class teacher's face when it fell upon her to tell me that there was a reason I had the whole classroom to myself. No, seriously she was very polite (I guess you cannot hold your breath with your nose and be mad at the same time, the respiratory system just wouldn't work that way) and asked me if I had bathed. I think she was more embarrased than I was. Anyway, I never went to school again without smelling like a rose and looking like the freshest lily in the valley after that.

P.S. I started writing this post coz I was reminded of the smell of horses. Given that I have a heightened olfactory sense, I wonder if I may just be smelling of horses again. But how?