Xin Wei THOW

Essay published by Jom,  a weekly digital magazine covering arts, culture, politics, business, technology and more in Singapore.

Excerpt:

Travelling throughout South-east Asia, I have recognised smells that struck me as belonging to ‘ah ma’s house’. On a trip to Ayutthaya, Thailand, I was shown a cheap room in a random guesthouse that was so redolent of its bedrooms that there was no option but to accept. Writing this passage, it comes back to me: all I see are the solid wooden floors and windows of one, alternating with the dingy mattress and threadbare curtain of the other. Another smell feels more difficult to evoke since these two years marooned in Singapore, my longest unbroken span: all my mind offers are images of hot days in dusty streets, making me suspect that what I was smelling is not just her house per se, but rather the base notes of small-town South-east Asia that thrum through the region. And yet, I feel somehow confident that it is there, just beyond what I can see, and that when I draw closer, it will rush up to greet me, as if I had never left.