Petrichor.
(noun| a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the
first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather)
One of my favourite words. Both for its meaning and its
sound. For what it evokes in reality…and in its symbolism.
Here in Perth, it is a Petrichor kind of day today. Whether we
commuted to work or stayed home, there’s no way to miss it. If you ask me,
there should be a national Petrichor Day, especially here in Australia. (Imagine
my joy when I discovered that the word was coined in 1964 by two Australian
CSIRO researchers, Isabel Joy Bear and Richard G. Thomas, for an article in the
journal “Nature”.)
A day of gratitude. A day to practise the art of doing
nothing much. A day to acknowledge that it’s the little things that matter. The
quiet evenings…the perfect Spotify playlists…the mood lights in the living room….
the essential oil diffuser in the hallway…the mindfulness in doing a pencil
sketch…the calmness of ditching Netflix and finishing that book.
National day or not, I bought flowers to celebrate it.
Flowers that remind me of raindrops. Light, breezy, dreamy. And I have big
plans to do the little things. I will sit and sip on my Darjeeling… listening
to the leaves rustle, the pitter-patter of the rain on the metal
roof, the water trickling down the eaves, as the wind whooshes through
the night. (Gotta love onomatopoeia!)
And while Petrichor is not a traditional example of sound symbolism
(phonaesthesia) or onomatopoeia….for me, it is evocative of a sensory
experience so strong, that it could almost qualify as one. Doesn’t the
"stony," sound of the word "petri" (originating from the
Greek “petra”) make you almost smell that earthy scent the word stands for?
Speaking of onomatopoeia, turns out that the Japanese
language relies much more on mimetic words (known in linguistics as ideophones)
than the English language. “Known popularly as onomatopoeia, these words do not
just imitate sounds but also cover a much wider range of meanings…” (Wikipedia).
And the most popular mimetic word in Japanese happens to be “doki doki”, which is
a term used to mean “the heart pounding”. So similar to “duk duk” in Bengali,
don’t you think?
Anyway, I better stop rambling now. I have a lot of nothing
to do today.
Wishing everyone in Perth a Happy (unofficial) Petrichor Day
today (and to anyone else who hasn’t enjoyed a day of rains but doesn’t mind
celebrating it).
