The perfumes of Bengaluru: Jasmine and sandalwood

IAm standing at Al-Kareem Attars and Perfumes in Ibrahim Sahib Street, discussing Ruh Gulab with calophyllum longifolium, the adult female slow the heel counter. It is eventide but even though she has been working all day, Maria says she doesn’t get “nose fatigue.” So we converse about what I want: a milder version of the classic Jannat-ul-firdaus or Garden of Paradise attar with floral and woody layers. Actually, I am told that attars are the correct name for the scents and attars are the perfumers who make them. When I searched for the right way to say “maker of attars” it gave me “baai uttri” as a choice, but since I don’t speak Arabic, I am not sure.Scents are a conversation. In Bengaluru, Ally Mathan was and is the original perfumer, but since I live near Commercial Street, I end up visiting with the attar-perfumers there. The beauty of living in Bangalore or any other city in India is that you can discuss scents with perfumers to create unique fragrances that suit a moment and mood. Scents, after all, do what words cannot. They speak for you.The scent of Bengaluru is sandalwood and jasmine. To experience sandalwood, you have to drive two hours to Mysuru, where the wood is distilled into small bottles that smell of the forest floor. The shortcut of course is that you can buy sandalwood essential oil at Cauvery Emporium on MG Road for a lot of money.But what I am interested in these days is the rose. I have heard about the roses of Hassayan, outside Agra, from my perfumer friend, Jahnvi Lakhota Nandan. She told me that nearly four tonnes of damask or Noor Jehan roses are picked before sunrise “by men and women moving like shadows,” then sent to Kannauj in wicker baskets where they are distilled in large copper pots that are slowly heated. The hot steam releases the essential oils of the flower which then flows through bamboo pipes into another container. This is called the ruh al gulab or ‘soul of the rose’.Indian and Arab cultures have a sophistication about perfume that is native and layered. We know how to use attars, pastes and unguents. In Bengaluru, I can indulge in it by visiting one of the many attar shops in Shivaji Nagar. Ibrahim Sahib street is where I begin because it contains several attar shops including Al-Kareem, La Scents, IRS Perfume World, Ajmal, Asma Perfumery and other traditional attar stores that have now morphed to create perfumes that mimic western scents from brands such as Roja Dove, Le Labo, Gucci and others.Earlier, I used to choose these western mimics, but now I gravitate towards traditional Arab scents. My current favourite is Mukhallat Jujur, a variation of the classic rose-oud combo that is the basis of many Arab perfumes. Mukhallat means blend, as opposed to classic ittrs where flowers, herbs and resins are distilled into a base of sandalwood oil: a Karnataka connection.As I told photographer-filmmaker Ramya Reddy, who also creates perfumes for her brand, Coonoor & Co, smell is linked to identity and memory. A fragrance can take you to a lemon tree that you sampled as a teenager; to a childhood crush who smelled of musk, or to the vetiver root that protected you from the sun.The mother of all scents of course is nature. The flint and minerality of her rocks is seen in Chablis wines. The smell of spices reminds all Indians of their grandmothers. It is in our poetry: wet earth and pouring rain, to quote a Sangam one that reeks of petrichor. The jasmine-musk that Indians dab behind their ear lobes is both subtle and blatant. Inside each saree lies a thousand smells and stories, each wrapped in nostalgia. A scent thus, connects your past, present and future. It moves you in ways that you cannot articulate or even fathom. Fragrance, like poetry, is emotion compressed into a bottle or verse.The pleasure of buying mukhallats and ittrs in Shivaji Nagar is the fact that you can inhale the smells, adjust their notes, and see what they evoke and invoke. Each smell restores feelings that have been broken by the long arm of time. They carry jolts of imagination, for both perfumer and wearer. A rose can hit you with the force of a sledgehammer. But mix it with musk and it becomes a gentle santoor. A tuberose can confuse, but mix it with amber and it sings. Scents in that sense, take you home.In Bengaluru, there are several ways we experience perfume. One is through local incense brands like Sugandha Lok which has a shop in Gandhi Bazaar. The other is through fragrance oils. The last and perhaps the most labour-intensive is by wearing flower garlands in our hair. All these three traditions go back in time. Early Indian men used to adorn themselves with flowers too, by wearing garlands on bare chests, perfect attire for a tropical country like India. Sadly for men, that bare-chested garland-wearing tradition has been killed because we have copied western attire with all its prudishness.The great news is that attars, ittrs (call it as you will) and mukhallats are accessible to all of us. So go ahead, buy that vial of mitti perfume, or green vetiver, or musk-rose, champaka or jasmine perfume. Put it on your pulse points. Guess what? The day will immediately start looking better.(Shoba Narayan is Bengaluru-based award-winning author. She is also a freelance contributor who writes about art, food, fashion and travel for a number of publications.)