Good old olfactory

Celebrating The Many Scents That Are Reminiscent Of Life

Kalpita Chakraborty, AIS Vasundhara 6, XI B

Smell – the rather ignored sibling of the sense clan. Sight gave us a beautiful skyline and SRK. Sound has given us Bryan Adams (Himesh Reshammiya too). Touch was all about hugs. And smell. What did smell offer? And yet our life revolves around these very smells. Fragrances you love and fragrances you hate. Fragrances that are a part of you and fragrances that you lose to time.
As a baby in our mother’s arms, we smell of baby products and sweetness; and on other occasions - poop. Emanating our own sweet baby smell, a fragrance that the entire world agrees upon biologically; it is the same sense  that we develop first. In fact, when life first emerged on the planet in the form of single cell organisms, smell was the first sense they acquired, so that the organism could understand its surroundings, find food and reproduce.
But life has evolved since the days of unicellular organisms and so do we from baby to a child, clinging onto our mother’s scent; whilst the scent of mud sticks to us when we come home after playing. Clinging on to scents is a natural and in the corporate world, even profitable. That’s where the biggest fashion houses get their maximum profits from – perfumes.
Puberty hits and brings along varied smells – that of body odour and deodorant covering the same. But we don’t realise that we aren’t the only ones masking one smell with another. The food industry has been tapping on this for long. For instance, the coffee capsules used in any coffee shop are designed in such a way that they create a lot of odour. So, you can sit back and smell the beans while you sip on your favourite cuppa, enhancing the experience of another sense ie taste.
Then comes adulthood where we use the same perfume every day, until people identify us by that scent. Come to think of it, a fragrance becomes your identity. But fragrance and identities have been overlapping, more often than we think. The Imperial Hotel has always used orange tinged diffusers, spraying the same fragrance on their hotels, so every time you step in, you smell the ‘imperial smell’.
While some fragrances become a part of our identity, there are a few that become our comfort zone. Stepping into the mature stage, taking up a job, the fragrance of evening tea filling up the workplace drives a sense of relaxation. At this age even the scent of home ushers comfort like none other.
We’ve all hunted for words, trying to find comfort, when even a fragrance  can do the job, more than words can say. That explains why a simple smell made Rolls Royce hit rock bottom. As the car advanced, the makers used plastic instead of wood. The car didn’t smell the same and the customer missed the ‘new car smell’. The sales of the fastest selling luxury car nosedived, all because of a smell.
Finally, when we get old, we appreciate the fragrances of life even as they  fade. The same supper now smells of nostalgia, as we reminisce the times our mother cooked for us. It’s the same fragrance, just a different connotation. But it isn’t just age that changes the way we smell things. Cultures too have a huge role to play. Rose perfume, tied to tradition, is a popular fragrance in UK, whereas, US considers it pretty old fashioned. In Europe and North America, the same fragrance of rose is considered as a symbol of femininity and luxury.
Just like that smell, comes a whole full circle, some fragrances leaving more impact than the other. And yet, we put smell on the lowest rung in the hierarchy of senses; it has always been that way. Plato assigned the sense of sight as the foundation for philosophy, and Aristotle considered sight and hearing nobler in comparison to touch, taste, and smell. One can only hope that humans wake up and smell the rain.

Humour and crisis

Existentialism: Our Past Or Our Present?

Saanvi Wadhwa, AIS Vas 6, XI B

“The Wish to Die: From soldiers of the War, to the millenial generation, the wish to find humour in death has remained unchanged.”
Why do we millennials make memes about wanting to die? Why is millennial humour absurdist and nihilistic? Our humour baffles the older generations, but we have an explanation. Millennials have a dismal economic outlook, the worst any generation has had since the Great Depression; debts rise, incomes dwindle, our world is in shambles. In the midst of this, our absurdist humour is a reflection of our outlook on life. And this is not the first time we have behaved this way in response to the world we have to live in.
It started during the WWI, when such humour took roots in the minds of soldiers. Fear manifests itself in different ways, and for soldiers, this was ‘gallows humour’, making jokes about their death was a way to escape its inevitability and their fears.
So ultimately, it spread among the commons, and then to politicians and leaders too. People needed a way to survive death, and humour became a coping mechanism. In fact, during American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln became war’s most notorious jester, known for his goofy self-deprecating style.
Humour could not stop the inevitable, but at least it helped people talk openly about it. Our humour is how we address our disillusionment with the events we are facing. Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ used absurdist humour to explore ideas of existentialism. With  nonsensical lines said by fickle characters, he inserted humour in tragic situations to create a dark comedy. While ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ explores just how vague our lives are and how we all, at some point of our lives reach a crossroad where we wonder which direction should we continue in or should we even continue at all?
In short, absurdist humour is a means to express the core disappointment of the millennial generation. After all, our comedy only reflects the unending horror of politics in the present and the non-sensical global state of affairs.
Absurdist humour isn’t going
anywhere, regardless of whether it’s a movement or a phase. It’ll remain in existence as long as we’re alive in this so called strange world.

Legacy of language

Congratulations to the GT journos of AIS Vasundhara 6. I glanced through the newspaper, I knew that the wordsmith warriors are out in the battlefield to be the best. The top story of this issue on the indigenous languages immediately caught my eyes, as it kindled so many emotions and brought back memories of the days gone by when mother tongue/regional language used to be a cherished legacy. As I see the world evolving, and people increasingly adopting English as their first language, I am impelled to share that we need to understand our mother tongue or the regional language we speak and its importance. Our mother tongue or regional language is not just a language but a treasure trove of the knowledge of science, math, arts and literature. There are so many recipes, medicinal prescriptions, applied science/engineering concepts and traditional knowledge written or passed down the generations in regional languages which are now in peril with less, few or even no speakers left today.
In today’s global world, it’s important to learn and speak our mother tongue/regional language and English with equal aplomb. While former helps us to stay connected with our roots and act at local level, the latter is a tool for reaching out to the world full of opportunities for us to explore. This is one of the many reasons why we at Amity teach in English while also offering an option of pursuing one foreign language be it German, Japanese or French. At the same time, Sanskrit as a compulsory subject is mandatory for all the students so that they also learn about their rich cultural heritage. It gives me immense satisfaction to see my Amitians learn Sanskrit along with other languages with as much panache, becoming truly global citizens who can change the world by acting locally. 

Welcome change

Change is propounded as the only constant in life. Yet, we humans, are evolutionarily predisposed to resist change owing to the risks likely to be associated with it. And the whole world is testimony to this inevitability of change. Take for instance, the American elections, or the Maharashtra polls, all these incidents compel us to expect the unexpected and welcome it eventually. 
One such change that the world is welcoming is the fact that India is emerging as a new world power with its new political, strategic and economic trends. It is time for the youth to work towards how they want the whole world to acknowledge their country. Thus, the onus is on  this generation to strive for continuous improvement instead of yearning for perfection and stay abreast first hand with the world happenings instead of depending on hearsays, ensuring that for the years to come, they will take India to a better level, achieving new glorious heights of success and solidarity.
And with this vision, our honourable Chairperson, Dr (Mrs) Amita Chauhan, has given students ample platforms to understand the world and the way it functions. One such avenue is The Global Times, which allows the budding intellectuals to contemplate and deliberate on significant matters and let their thoughts flow in the form of words. It further helps the young minds showcase their prowess, hone their knowledge skills, and above all, imbibes in them the value of ‘Espirit-De-Corps’. I am confident that the students are in the right hands and will keep pacing on the path towards righteousness.

True team spirit

Behind every successful accomplishment of a goal is the effectual functioning of a team. And today, in this space, I wish to reflect on the true meaning that the word ‘teamwork’ holds.
True teamwork is the rarest, most exhilarating, and most productive human activity possible; an energy that is incredible. It is often a fusion of three elements – collaboration, compromise and cooperation, which is one thing that I have learnt being a part of the wonderful journey called the ‘GT Making A Newspaper Contest’. Be it the editorial team of the school or team at The Global Times, every one associated with it, function in perfect tandem with each other and make drafts, designs and deadlines seem like it is all a piece of cake. This is exactly what
Dr (Mrs) Amita Chauhan, Chairperson, RBEF and Amity Group of Schools, has inculcated in Amitians- true team spirit.
This for sure is an unmatched experience and enhances their professional self in a way that they become the trailblazers for their subordinates and juniors. And we cannot thank her enough for having provided the students with this great catalyst to incite their skills and learn the trade of being number one in whatever they undertake.