Vivek Prakash/Reuters

Smell is one of the most evocative of the five senses, allowing us to relive memories that span our entire lives. Scents from the kitchen make our mouths water. Scents from nature make us long to be outdoors. Considering that on average our bodies consist of 60% water, it isn’t surprising that we’re so attuned to the range of smells associated with H2O.

Many of the RAXA Collective team long for the refreshing monsoon rains in Kerala, never imagining that exhilaration could be captured in a bottle.

Once again we thank The Guardian for this intoxicating story.

Every storm blows in on a scent, or leaves one behind. The metallic zing that can fill the air before a summer thunderstorm is from ozone, a molecule formed from the interaction of electrical discharges—in this case from lightning—with oxygen molecules. Likewise, the familiar, musty odor that rises from streets and storm ponds during a deluge comes from a compound called geosmin. A byproduct of bacteria, geosmin is what gives beets their earthy flavor. Rain also picks up odors from the molecules it meets. So its essence can come off as differently as all the flowers on all the continents—rose-obvious, barely there like a carnation, fleeting as a whiff of orange blossom as your car speeds past the grove. It depends on the type of storm, the part of the world where it falls, and the subjective memory of the nose behind the sniff…

But nowhere is rain’s redolence more powerful than at the climatic extremes of the world—in India, Southeast Asia, West Africa, and parts of Australia—where great, dry swaths of desert are inundated with the most dramatic seasonal storms on Earth. In the otherwise dry places that depend on the downpours for most of their annual rainfall, monsoons shape everything from childhood to culture to commerce. And they arrive with a memory-searing scent. To Sanjiv Chopra, the Indian-American Harvard Medical School physician and author, the loamy smell of long-awaited rains soaking India’s dry soil is “the scent of life itself.” The earthy essence is strongest when rain quenches dehydrated ground. The scent can so tantalize drought-stricken animals that it sets thirsting cattle walking in circles.

Read the entire story here.