Eternity Is In The Air

Last year, a woman contributed the following real-life anecdote to the New York Times weekly “Metropolitan Diary” column:

Dear Diary: It was a day when the threat of rain hung in the air. I drove up to a drive-through market in Stony Brook, L.I., to buy milk and was waited on by a man wearing a turban. Handing me my change through the car window, he said, with the trace of an Indian accent, “Ah! The smell of eternity is in the air.”

I was impressed, assuming his mystical words were either the Indian equivalent of “It feels like rain,” or a philosophical observation akin to “The end is near.” I smiled politely and said nothing.

But…