Scent per cent Indian THE HINDUSTAN TIMES, Sunday Magazine, April 25, 1999 Pg.3 Indian perfumes or attars, as they are called, have a small but committed clientele. Firoz Bakht Ahmed describes the art that goes into their making, the varieties available and the need to promote this indigenous industry Can there be anything that can evoke a memory like the wafting fragrance of a real desi perfume? In this regard , attar - the centuries old Indian art of blended perfumes comes redolent with nostalgia when the elegant, dignified, sophisticated, grand and unhurried life style made people praise the aesthetic subtleties of grace and personal charm. Attar, originally an Indian perfume, has a heritage of multipurpose potency behind it distilling the unforgettable fragrances of the world being presented in cut glass decanters for you. Now this fragrance is in vogue in the Parisian fashion seminaries especially when Naomi Campbell, the bewitching model fell for Indian mehndi and attar of late. Stolen from fresh flowers, the fragrances are whisked into glass bottles after a very tedious and long drawn process. A very specific fact about Indian Perfumes is that people keep using the same perfume for years together - in fact for the whole life! Even today, attar chameli is one that ex-President Shankar Dayal Sharma uses while attending formal functions. People using foreign perfumes keep changing one brand to another but sans satisfaction. Maulana Azad was fond of attar Majmua. The queen of all attars happens to be Rooh Gulab, that was one discovered by Noorjahan, the wife of Mughal emperor, Jahangir. Once while she went for her morning bath, she found an oily layer over the water kept to cool overnight and when it was distilled later on her order, it turned out to the costliest attar. According to brothers Ram Singh and Krishan Mohan Singh, the proprietors of Delhi’s oldest attar shop Gulab Singh Johri Mal established in 1816. It is not an easy job collecting pure and fresh flowers for the purpose of extracting attars from them. The Singh brothers relate their tales of running form pillar to post in search of gathering fresh and pure flowers. For Rooh Gulab, the attar of roses, they visit flower gardens of Kannauj, Sikatra near Aligarh, Ghazipur and Jaunpur. The condition is that the flowers must be plucked at dawn and used before the sun rises for after that, the fragrance begins to leave the blooms. For Chameli and Motia, they have to go to Sikandarpur and some villages in Varanasi. In the Ganjam district of Orissa’s Kellua Palli, Krishan and Ram Singh get Keora, Molsri and Champa, “A good perfume is like a good woman! It shouldn’t be too blatan; it should slowly but surely make way into your mind and then your heart!” Multi-purpose potency of the attars is incredibly vast indeed. Passages in Indian literature are replete with examples of attar being quite an aid to romance. Young men and gods dreamt of maidens walking in a cloud of jasmine, roses and marigold scents and maidens confiding to their friends about trysts with their lovers, went into raptures over “his handsome body smeared with sandalwood powder !” The real drama still remains in the dab of attar over the jingle of bangles of a Mughal princess or the wick of attar-soaked cotton behind the ear of a Mughal nobelman. Cleopatra used it, the heady art behind seduction, a symbol of prosperity and culture. In Aain -e-Akbari , Abul Fazal, has mentioned about Akbar using the fragrant attar along with the burning of incense sticks daily burnt in gold and silver censers. A princess’s toilette was incomplete without incense and attar. But today, it appears that the attar is losing its market in competition to the synthetic perfumes. Krishan Mohan Singh at Chandni Chowk doesn’t believe that. He piques’ “This is wrong . Truth is that the attars are in fact gaining ground slowly but surely.” He seems to be right as the people pouring in his shop let him have no breath as they constantly demand for one item or the other including the pure Indian attar oils, agarbattis (incense sticks), herbal soaps without the animal fats, synthetic attars (blended with modern chemicals and cheaper in price) and the dhoop. On the other hand his elder brother is of the view that the business of perfumes isn’t that flourishing as it used to be in the days of yore. He also blames the media that doesn’t really highlight the pure Indian Perfumes. “They all think that the Johny Pohny synthetic sprays are the order of the day as they are trendy stuff. But there is new ray of hope as the youngsters in certain sections of the Indian society are craving for attars. In fact the daily turnover of the attar market in India is more than 50 crores according to a market survey report. According to Blossom Kochher, aromatherapy, a very important branch of Indian systems of medicines has long been subjected to blatant neglect. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been played up and people are unaware about it. The therapeutic aspect of Indian Perfumes must be elaborated by some big corporate sponsors. Since Indian perfumery system hasn’t any big name to pat its back, it appaers to be dying. While Ram Singh Gundhi talks to me, his son Praful Gundhi, Atul and Mukul dole out little bottles of 2, 5 and 10 ml. of Bela, Chameli, Shamama and Chandan attar. A steady stream of customers keeps pouring in - naturopaths looking for ‘essential massage oils’, young girls replenishing their stock of scent, old ladies in search of chandan powder and those few who seem to drop in after having been led by the nose when the unbelievable assault on their olfactory nerves was made! About five years ago it seemed that the market of attars would die but thanks mainly to younger generation that leaned towards it, the culture of attars has survived. Attars are not only classified according to their contents but also according to the time of the year in which they are to be used. The warm notes of the spicy Hina prepared from musk and saffron have the greatness of smelling different on every skin. It gives a great feeling in winters. Whenever Ghalib used to meet his beloved in winters, he puposedly smeared his hands and face with attar Hina. Besides, according to Naveen Gundhi, son of Krishan Mohan, aromatherapy, a new branch of curing diseases by attars was developed in India long ago. The oils that are used in making of attars too are known for their medicinal effects. The simplest example of aromatherapy is Gill (sondhi mitti) that has the fresh aroma that emanates from the earth after the first summer shower. On smelling it cures flow of blood through nose owing to intense heat. Sherbet of attar Khus is relished in summers as it provides a cooling effect to the digestive system. As it is quite unaffordable to buy pure attars these days for dearth of products like sandalwood, and ambergris which are rare, synthetic attars too are manufactured that are quite cheaper in comparison to the pure ones. These also have similar names but they are specified and cost not more than Rs 100 per 10 gm. vial like - Raat ki Rani, Harshinghar, Motia, Kadamba, Patchouli, Molsri etc. Besides, the incense sticks too are available at the “Gulab Singh Johri Mal” attar rendezvous. Ram Singh nostalgically recounts the memoirs of his grandfather Lala Banarsi Dass who used to tell him that there was a nehr (lake) named Nehr -e- Bahisht (River of Paradise) that used to flow in Chandni Chowk. During the reign of Akbar Shah II, men - nawabs, rajahs, landlords, subedars, the nobility - they all sat for hours in the shop of Gulab Singh delicately sniffing and choosing their attars placed in exquisite boxes with ivory in-laid work and carrying Belgian cut glass decanters were sent to the inner sanctums of the Mughal queens and princesses and other purdah-clad women from the nobility to sample and select their favourite fragrances. What is great about Indian perfumes is that they have not been subjected to gender equations as the western ones are made separately for men and women. But this quaint way of keeping fragrant is gradually slipping into the realm of “antique things in our grandfather’s time” , laments Krishan Mohan Singh but the elder brother Ram is hopeful as he says , “ Attars are like flowers - as old as them but as fresh as tomorrow’s dew drops.” So all you attar buffs, no more hankering after your choicest fragrances. Though nobody has the time and delicacy to make it a passion any more, the fondness will remain.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 02:28:44 +0000
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