Do you remember how we smelt before they partitioned us? | The Book of Everlasting Things Review

“Momentarily, he thought of the crook of his elbow, and how his mother had offered it to him as an island tucked away from the world of smell. He could have never imagined that one day, he would become an island himself, stranger to a city he called home.” For Aanchal Malhotra, an oral historian who has previously published two non-fiction novels on Partition, it is natural to set her debut novel against the backdrop of the burning Lahore of 1947. The chronicling of the history of ittar, the chemistry and the art behind olfactory masterpieces, and a refined narration of Urdu calligraphy's rich past make it a book of reference for admirers of lost arts around the globe. Vivek’s history saves Samir from passing into oblivion yet disrupts his present young family by making him choose to live in the past with the ghosts of the family he lost. A line from Suskind’s book reads, “He had preserved the best part of her and made it his own: the principle of her scent.” This is what Samir chases after his entire life, trying to recreate and preserve Firdaus for himself.