The story of the musk deer, enchanted by its perfume, roaming in search of its origin, unaware that the very ingredient resides inside itself, teaches us many classes––to introspect, realise our potentials, and perceive our goal.
For Esha Tewari, former advertising and promoting skilled, it took a pandemic to take a beat from the hustle tradition which she admittedly beloved––the fixed being- the on-the-go, along with her telephone buzzing with messages, gave her a way of goal. However, the lockdowns supplied her the time to stroll down the reminiscence lane and perceive her true calling––to create one thing of her personal.
Born in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, Tewari remembers seeing attars on the self-importance desk of her grandparents. As the pandemic supplied her the luxurious of time, the dormant recesses of her thoughts started to resurface, taking her again to these enigmatic scents and evoking recollections of visiting Kannauj, the fragrance capital of India, as a baby. She was raised with the attar heritage, virtually by default, by advantage of spending her childhood within the land of attars. The deeper she dived into these aromatic recollections, the nearer she felt to the thought of making them her personal with a enterprise to revive the oldest and the purest kind of perfumery on this planet for the trendy period.
“From Lucknow to Kannauj and Varanasi, the streets are crammed with attar saaz (connoisseurs). My grandfather, being an enormous fan of attars, used to deliver dwelling a range of these bottled fragrances. My summers was once perfumed with khas and Jasmine, and winters with extra mixes of spices and Oudh,” Tewari recollects.
Growing up, she typically used to go on journeys to see the making of attars, which is at least an artwork in itself. As she was researching to construct on her rekindled ardour, she found that India just isn’t current on the modern world map of fragrances regardless of having a wealthy expertise and heritage. That is as a result of, she says, “Our aesthetic sensibilities have modified over time.” Attars have been labelled as too heavy and headache-inducing whereas world fragrance manufacturers have gained extra acceptance.
“However, apparently, India is the first exporter of oudh and different pure supplies utilized in perfumery, reminiscent of the story of the musk deer,” she says. Tewari wished to have the ability to create an area the place the standard and the modern coexist in excellent concord. And along with her enterprise, she is mixing the previous craftsmanship with the brand new aesthetic calls for. This has additionally helped, she says, change the course of the livelihoods of conventional perfumers within the nation, thereby serving to revive a dying business.
She works with native artisanal perfumers of Hyderabad, Kannauj and now Uttarakhand. These locations have generations engaged on the making of attars, however the newer generations had been drifting off as folks started shifting to perfumes. As an answer, Tewari held workshops with trendy perfumers and conventional attar artisans to create trendy attars which retain the heritage of attars whereas taking heed of the present-day scent sensibilities. She makes use of the delicate sandalwood as the bottom oil to lend a contact of trendy sophistication.
Talking concerning the painstaking course of of making an attar, the younger entrepreneur says, “It teaches us about life, proper from the timing of the flowers being harvested. There is a distinction within the perfume of flowers harvested at 4 am and 4.30 am.” Large copper pots (Degh) are positioned onto a mud-brick platform set with fireplaces and linked to a sequence of cooling tanks by a long-necked copper receptacle (Bhapka) crammed with sandalwood which is partially suspended in chilly water. Degh and Bhapka are linked by hole bamboo pipes. The totally different botanicals are added to the copper cauldron that might be crammed with round 40 kg of water and heated.
The concoction simmers and the fragrance-imbibed vapour travels via the bamboo into the Bhapka. After every stage, a brand new layer of complexity could be added to the sandalwood oil. The course of takes about eight hours. Manufacturers say the standard system has stood the assessments of time. They don’t rush the method as it may burn the substances. “Each second needs to be savoured; it isn’t essential to be all the time busy to achieve success,” Tewari says.
The enterprise to revive the fragrance business has additionally given a brand new lease of life to the standard perfumers in locations like Kannauj and Hyderabad by serving to them change the course of their livelihoods
https://www.newindianexpress.com/journal/2022/might/08/revisiting-scents-of-nostalgia-2450170.html
