Scent and Spirit

There’s no mistaking the scent of an Iyengar bakery in Bangalore — the sweetness of a sponge cake, the warmth of butter and vanilla hanging in the air. Or the cooling yet herbal scent of a temple during the Karaga festival. These aromas are coordinates. Ways of locating yourself in a city that’s constantly rebuilding, repaving, forgetting what it used to be. Artist Indu Antony has been collecting them for years through Vāsané — the Kannada word for ‘smell’— her project preserving the city’s identity, one breath at a time. And this November, at SOKA, you can smell — and taste — what she’s found.

There’s a reason why these scents hold such power. Olfactory memory is tied to what neuroscientists call the Proust effect — scents travel directly to the brain’s limbic system, the seat of emotion and memory, without filtering through conscious thought. Involuntary and immediate — a kind of time travel that the body experiences before the mind can catch up. Indu, a trained doctor turned multidisciplinary creator, understood this intimately. Her medical background taught her the science, but it was her practice that posed a deeper question: what happens when the scents that define a place begin to fade?

Indu spent three years wandering the city, talking to its people, cataloguing the aromas that stitch Bangalore together. She identified 137 smells, 12 of which were distilled in her olfactory lab, each one a fragment of memory made tangible. The result was a book, a testament to a city outpacing its own ability to remember itself. “When you spend time with Bangaloreans, most conversations begin with — did you see that new flyover? Do you remember how different it was 10 years ago?” Indu says. “There’s this constant conversation about nostalgia in Bangalore. The city is changing so rapidly. Even if I were to go away for a month, I would come back to a new construction.”

She contrasts this with Kerala, where she’s originally from. “Every time I go back, the same chai stall with the same man running it is still right there, in the very same spot,” she reflects. “Kerala still holds on to its charm and authenticity, but Bangalore was very ready to quickly expand,” the pace creates a peculiar loss. “I think this also results in people losing their sense of belonging to the land. The idea of belonging is very strange here.” The whiffs of cement and dust now define the city as much as memories of rain on earth and filter coffee brewing at dawn. “I thought it was so sad that Bangalore, which was once called the garden city, has turned into an urban jungle of sorts,” she says. “I wanted to archive this nostalgia before it was all gone.”

When Indu visited SOKA — an intimate cocktail bar founded by chef Sombir Choudhary and Avinash Kapoli, inspired by Japanese izakaya and omakase — she recognised a kindred spirit. The bar was hyper-local, responding to the city’s pulse. She’d been pairing aromas with cocktails at home for friends. “I really wanted to understand how a smell could work with a drink,” she says. She wondered, why not try this as a proper collaboration? Avinash was immediately drawn to the concept. But translating olfactory art into a bar ritual took six months. “This is a very new concept. Nobody’s ever done this in the entire world,” Indu explains. Some suggested spritzing scent over the drinks. She resisted. “These are two equal companions which are going to be served together.” The question became: how do you serve a scent? The answer arrived in glass cloches placed over coasters infused with scent capsules. Lift, inhale, and sip. A choreography that engages memory before taste ever registers — the Proust effect made deliberate and shared.

Not all 12 scents could work in a bar, five were selected, each tethered to a Bangalore moment. “This process was not just about us sitting together in a living room and coming up with ideas,” Indu says. “We were visiting these specific locations.” At an Iyengar bakery, the team noticed customers pairing the classic sponge cake with a cup of chai. That became Chai & Sponge Cake — Bombay Sapphire with clarified masala chai and Lillet Rosé. “You had the sweetness from the cake and it was complemented with a refreshing cup of tea. The story came together naturally, and in full circle.” Also on the menu, Strictly Couples distils Cubbon Park on a Sunday afternoon. Lying on the lawn, grass soft between your fingers, the whiff of green in the air. Vendors approach with sliced cucumbers topped with spices. “Avinash pondered,” Indu says, “Maybe we can put the two together.” Every combination followed this ritual of observation. “Each pair of an aroma and a cocktail was crafted with one question in mind: how can we frame their story?”

For Indu, crossing disciplines and collapsing the boundaries between art and daily rhythm is instinctive. “As an artist, I am not someone who’s defined by the medium,” she shares. “The mediums or forms that I end up selecting are simply tools that I’ve used to express myself.” By placing olfactory art in an unexpected setting, she challenges what art can be and where it can live. The choreography becomes a performance, an installation, and a participatory act all at once. It democratises the sensory experience — art that asks you to lean in, breathe deep, and remember. This is what olfactory art does. It names the invisible.

This year, the SOKA x Vāsané collaboration returns with an extension — smells walks through iconic neighborhoods and intimate artist tables where Indu and Avinash unpack how scent and flavour shape memory. This is a love letter written in scent and spirit, a way of saying that before Bangalore forgets itself entirely, someone was here paying attention, treasuring what mattered. And what matters, it turns out, is what you can’t see but can’t forget: the scent of home.

SOKA x Vāsané
1st–30th November, 5:00 PM – 1:00 AM

Words by Rhea Sinha
Image Courtesy Soka