Living in India makes me unhinged and it’s often the micro rather than the macro that gets me glitch-maxxing.

Courtesy, decency, soft-spoken-ness is for Losers. And I’m a Loser. Or that’s how some interactions leave me feeling - small, powerless, there is nothing to be done, and no support to be had. I’m a small-size woman with less and less energy for drama much less confrontations — now those give me stomach aches. One cannot be delicate when it comes to living here, a painful lesson I learn on repeat.

Sometimes, out of nowhere, a path lights up. I get an idea how to beat these fuckers BUT I have to go full crazy. I have to sacrifice any notion of respectability. Go full monster.

All I want to do is build Beauty, inside my house, and around it. And to that, I have been surprisingly successful. “The Marxist Plot” garden that I built for the residents since August 2025 has shifted attitudes and changed behaviors over six months. (People stopped throwing trash from their kitchen windows above and the space has become a popular picnic spot for us, the maids and their toddlers!). I regularly share cutting of herbs for the residents, most of whom cannot believe that this generosity, these delicate blooms, are given freely with no strings attached. They look at me funny when I say “we deserve beautiful things”.

Prime Minister Gobi says Israel is India’s “Fatherland”

Life is so rough in the Third World, circumstances are hard, the smallest of interactions can be full of friction, no one has the luxury of slow encounters, there are no gardens. Wealth has proven to offer no guarantee of basic comforts because we could run of LPG any moment. How will we cook!

The last time I had to seriously consider dumping my reputation and ambition was when I went full monster to expose our Indian plagiarist on social media. This was interesting - steal our work, not cite us and then recruit an American-Israeli professor to convey that I don’t know the rules— lack of citation is not plagiarism. That people like me should “be careful”. Stealing peoples’ homes, their land, their work, their ethos, their soul is par for the course.

We live in a world controlled by cowards

I have been so angry at the moral cowardice displayed at every turn. That’s the Macro. But I do my Yoga, I make my perfume, I make people happy, I stay home, I nap with my puppy, and that’s it, that’s my whole world.

On the Micro, a slow build up of frustration made me go full monster again today! The co-op I live in has virtually no checks and balances (because following rules is for suckers remember?). Decisions are made by the uncle-men on major systemic accounting and such. But issues regarding civic sense are touchy, they escalate fast and a blow up on Whatsapp is the only pressure valve to release. But mostly what happens is that the person raising their valid concern is belittled and mocked by the resident-mob. The narrative gets out of hand, while the person causing the inconvenience continues on unbothered and moisturised because there are no consequences by way of penalties. I stay out of it all.

Anyways, I had this ongoing issue with my neighbour — their family keeps two large dogs loose in the lobby, rarely on a leash, they slip out unattended. They are so large and aggressive that I refer to them as “horses”. One is named “Dollar”, the other “Euro”. Rupee has no value! Hahaha!

I judge my neighbour’s gaudy Punjabi new-money decor of plastic flower garlands and large glitter-painting of a peacock because this is what my guests first see when they visit me. Even before they are inside my home, their eyes, their senses have been assaulted by glitter paintings in harsh gold frames above their cheap, dusty laminate sideboards. Indian interior design has a way of taking expensive materials and making them appear cheap, you know? You can spend alot of money but you still get cheap looking trashy bling interiors. That’s the Micro but one can begin to see how India is no longer the land of fine craftsmanship and exquisite quality manufacturing.

And excuse me! My visitors are my perfume clients - authors, collectors, historians- Soft! Sensitive! People! With Finesse! Gawwwd I am so embarrassed, I quickly rush them inside my pristine, sensorially calm interiors and get them sipping a Jasmine-Coffee stat!

0-60 in 1 second

I have found that Indians take offense pretty easily. How dare you say something bad about our PM Mozi ji! How dare you ask me to be considerate towards you!

Each time I requested my neighbour to install a gate, a quick, cheap and easy solution, I got outright refusals followed by plenty of How dare yous! As there is no system of intervention and mediation by the committee of uncle-men, I resigned myself to the next ten years of being terrorised by Dollar and Euro. Just two days back the foreign-currency-dogs had let themselves out while my neighbours were away! My usual request for a gate later was met with their mockery of my character and I went away feeling small. Such interactions make me forget who I am. I shrink.

However, when I heard my neighbour loudly gossiping about me to a maid this morning, I glitched. I thought ok, no more decency and meekness. I just need to be the bigger threat. Gate or no gate, I promised to mace their currency-horses the next time I saw them out. Then, for good measure, I put that declaration up in the building Whatsapp group for all to see. Full unhinged crazy lady threat.

To my surprise, the neighbour-uncle did not come back with a how dare you, instead he squealed “These are LIES…We feel victimised and bullied by this lady, we are scared.” Now they know what I have known— help isn’t coming.

*No animals have been harmed. Yet.

LITRAHB PERFUMERY

The annual Flower Show returned to the historic Empress Gardens and this time, I paced myself properly! I went alone on day 1 to view the fresh floral arrangements before they wilt, to see the competitions of roses and vegetables, purchase few plants that I can carry in my two hands, walk the perimeter of the entire fair, and return home in the evening before the crowds swell. Day 2, I went with a friend to face the rushing crowds making a beeline for the snacks!

I do not know how one enters the rose and veggie competition or the standards they are judged by, but I enjoy seeing them nonetheless. A certain bunch of coconuts got the first prize this year?— Cool!

The best part about this event is the nurseries mainly from Maharashtra that come to to sell their special plants. I get the opportunity to see a dazzling variety of aquatic plants, herbs, fruit trees, bulbs, corms and tubers! Last year I purchased a stunning Kerala banana tree that did not survive by the time I planted it downstairs in the ground months later.

I love speaking to the nursery owners to understand what they specialize in, which town/village they come from, and what they grow in their own homes for themselves! It’s the only thing I look forward to in Pune, the rest of the 11 months of the year, I am SO BORED!

I picked up a small pandan that I think is difficult to find outside Southeast Asia, purple basil, lemon vine, one very pretty pink flower geranium, and a pencil cactus for the absurd price of Rs. 50! I saw a kumquat tree but I thought it too costly at Rs. 500. (Your girl is on a budget, buy some perfume, then I can spend on a whole citrus orchard!)

The lemon vine is new to me, the seller explained that South Indians make chutney from the fruit and leaves. It is technically a succulent! I also got two tuberose bulbs and multiple black turmeric bulbs for the first time. An impulse purchase was a Stephania Rotunda caudex. A succulent native to SeAsia, this is what the plant looks like:

Don’t you know about “hurda parties”?!!

As a diaspora from West Africa, this is the first time I am properly living in India, so many smells and flavours are new to me. Not speaking Marathi is definitely a barrier for me while I keep a microscopic social network.

Only a few years back did I learn about “hurda”, a fresh grain that is only available in the winter for a short spurt of time. Hurda is frustratingly not available in the market and my only encounter is at this festival! Half the size of a green pea, this bubble-y grain is roasted and eaten as a bhel/salad with chutneys, or fried as pakodas. Last week a friend told me about “hurda parties” that are hosted by farmers. You go to these farms on the outskirts of Pune, set up a picnic on the ground, the grain is thrashed, roasted and served, there’s sugarcane juice and there’s plenty of tea and good vibes to usher in the new year! Doesn’t this sound beautiful?!

Other things:

On the first day of the year, I made soaps in new forms to gift away to family, friends, and the gardening staff that care for The Marxist Plot downstairs.

And here is a photo of me finding my soap being UNused in my parents’ bathroom. It is displayed here like a piece of art. This is what everyone does and it makes me so mad. No one uses my soaps, friends and clients alike hoard them like souvenirs. That means no one returns to buy more soap - my business is suffering people! USE THEM AND BUY MORE!!!!

Last month, I was in Goa to deliver a lecture-workshop to expand on my practice as well as our installation at Serendipity Arts Festival. As our first installation in any art event, we wanted to make sure had a zero waste production. Lily, Rini and I kept the concept and presentation very simple and we were specially heartened to see visitors respond to this quietly scented soil-site with so much heart. We want to create more site specific projects like this! Follow Rini and Lily here. More on our concept here.

As for my lecture, I took the audience through my journey as an art critic, my ethical practice fusing criticism with perfume, my digital garden gift to the public “Bagh-e Hind”, and arriving to the point where I can finally create my own physical garden for the first time in my life. The guests also experienced perfumes and real materials such as orange absolute from Tunisia, Rose and vetiver from India and so on. It was intimate and delightful. There is a video recording on YouTube but I hesitate to share it because I think I gossiped too much about gatekeeping institution people!

My convictions have hardened. People with credentials say alot of lofty things, but I always put my money where my mouth is. I create the change that I want to see, and I make sure I am never around anyone who compromises. As my dear friend said to me at Serendipity, there’s always a cost, and it’s good that we pay the price for who we are. May we never suffer from moral ambiguity.

Dal Lake perfume is ready! And for fun, I made myself a Peanut butter-Jelly perfume! You want?

LITRAHB PERFUMERY

This is going to be a quick one at the close of 2025. The website has had a revamp for the winter season. Gone are the monsoon clouds in the image of our little splishy-splashy prince from the 17th century— instead the landing page opens with a calm cerulean-drenched print depicting warmly robed people on a wooden boat traversing the Dal lake in the 1910s.

The Blue-ness (my favourite colour), got me thinking about the possibility of smelling the winter lake, the snow, the watery-ness… As I was trying to figure out the materials — Kashmiri lavender extract, Lotus extract…maybe saffron hidden in Himalayan cedarwood for the boat, I got commissioned to create a perfume gift-set of solid perfume in silver pillboxes. The client meant to thank and appreciate a few of the doctors at a hospital for taking care of her child during an intensely critical situation last month, so I understood this commission to be more sensitive than usual. Nothing exuberant like Rose or “loud” like fruity Mango, but a fragrance that embodied quiet reflection. The result was an aquatic lily, fennel, lavender, cedar and cashmeran musk sealed in beeswax that I am very pleased with as it inspires a cool, elegant slow-ness wrapped in a wooly shawl.

Here’s my best hand stitching!

I’ll be formulating a micro-batch of “Dal lake, Kashmir, 1916” perfume concentrate once I’m back from my workshop in Goa next week.

“The Soil Room” at Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa

This has been nearly a year in the making. My concepts are so floaty, I invited my friend and academic Lily Kelting to collaborate on expanding the idea on using smell to identify healthy living soil through an installation the public can be invited into - to inhale, to rest— rest is a key factor as audiences are generally rushed through art exhibitions with heavy (often gibberish) wall-texts. We then got onboard the loveliest visual designer Rini Singhi to help us materialise our vision through her creative lens.

Lily and Rini are already there getting things set up. There are four different smell-zones: Wild Grass, Microgreens, Terracotta/Clay, and Earth.

If you are in town, you could even sign up for a workshop I am giving on the 18th December together with Simar Puneet, another excellent colleague of mine who will guide us through smell in Indian/ South Asian fiction. And as usual, I want attendees to go away with some sense of luxury in their hands, so everyone will go home with a small vial of Soil perfume and a saffron bulb.

One needn’t perceive fragrance and the pleasures of Mughal-era gardens as material and spiritual concepts exclusively accessible to academics and the elite. With some sense of urgency, I would like to put these ideas literally into your hands — plant the bulb, wear the perfume, and build a beautiful world by organising and creating gardens!

Sign-up for the Workshop

Lastly, I want to thank each and everyone of you for staying with me through this newsie, through commissioning me, buying perfume from me and keeping me sane!

LITRAHB PERFUMERY

What could be a sensorial counterpoint to a cold, grey, wet British December?

When the request came up for a “real vanilla but also floral” bespoke perfume, I figured the two principal ingredients were easy— jasminum grandiflorum CO2 and vanilla oleoresin. With two very warm, tropical, very opulent ingredients to start with, what other combination could be more suitable for the purpose of bottling sunshine for a grim winter!

I like to keep the bones and muscles of any perfume natural, while enhancing the structure with synthetic molecules as they help lift off and sustain the core aromatic facets of dense oily botanical extracts. I try being as specific as possible when working with clients who are too far away for a sampling process. So I press on with many questions. Vanilla how? Vanilla like candy, sticky toffee, pastry, bready, milky-icecreamy, nostalgic birthday cake-icing-like?

Or Vanilla like the bean, leathery, buttery-resinous, bitter-fruity, richly fragrant?— OK! This one!

Now, Floral like how? Which flower— Violets, Peonies, Rose, Jasmine (which jasmine! intense sambac or light grandi variety?!),… here, I intervened a bit to suggest the extracts of pink lotus, mimosa, and the more pleasant jasmine grandiflorum as it possesses a white-rubber-milky facet.

Ethylvanillin, an intense flavour and fragrance ingredient, is very useful here to boost the stickier qualities of vanilla oleoresin when blended with sandalwood oil, benzoin, coumarine (another flavour ingredient), floral honey and heliotrope (synthetic accord), and castoreum (also synthetic because no one is going after beaver’s anal glands like they did uptill the early 20th century).

This jasmine CO2, as much as I love it, has proven to be a very stubborn waxy material, better for flavouring my coffee and coconut pudding than to use up in perfume. I like the sensation of “eating a thousand jasmines” any day! Pictured above, the bright orange jammy stuff is the CO2 extract. I beat it into sugar and then use that “jasmine sugar” to whip into coconut cream for desserts or into jam or into gently brew into a pot of Darjeeling tea. If I am not too lazy, I add a tiny scoop of jasmine CO2 into warm sandalwood oil to use for on my face and skin.

Maybe the waxiness of this material is visible in this photo above. I had to gently heat the perfume in a small beaker and then pour it through the filter-paper to get the wax out. The debris-free perfume oil now sits in this bottle for a week to mature. You’ll recognise the real silver plates (eyes, ears, nose, mouth) stuck on the bottle from my previous newsie Corpse Flower.

News:

1. Early November I was invited to host a scent-session for the Pune-based luxury fashion label “Ka Sha” at their studio. The intent of this two hour workshop with their team and their clients, was to experience numerous scents and flavours in order to settle on a perfume that could be fused into their finished garments embodying brand identity and ethos. So, when clients open their packages, they are greeted with the scent of ka Sha before even seeing their dress. We settled on two scents: Rose & Soil for the winter and Mango Chutney for the summer season.

   

2. Next month, December 16-17th, I will be in Goa to participate in the Serendipity Arts Festival. Here I will be featuring a “Living Soil” installation with my colleagues, academic, Lily Kelting and our production designer, Rini Singhi. I will also conduct a talk and a workshop with my friend Simar Puneet who is an excellent scholar on South Asian literature. To the audience who attends, I will be gifting each one a “Soil” perfume and a saffron bulb to go home and plant. Honestly, the art world dynamics of low-budget-no-pay is very disinteresting to me, all I want to do is show up and gift the public something luxurious. And I want to chit chat and gossip. So if you’re coming to Goa for the festival, come say hi!

   

3. Last month I finished embellishing all the French 1950s workwear jackets with gold zari thread. They arrived from France with no trouble at the customs so I then sent them to Juliette Ravel to revive their indigo colours and saturate them. Now that each one has been mended, restored and infused with new life, they are up on the website for purchase.

4. I enjoyed this process so much that I even went to my friends at Ka Sha to learn the broad metal thread “Muqaish” embroidery. Remember the $200,000 men’s jacket released by Dior this year? The one that was embroidered by Indian artisans reportedly over 34 days and probably for a pittance? Yeah, I figured out how that jacket must have been embellished.

   

   I spent an afternoon with one of Ka Sha’s embroiderer learning how the metal thread is sewn in to create various patterns and shapes. It is extremely tedious and it seems I need reading glasses now at my age!

   

   A normal cotton thread is looped into the fabric just wide enough to slide the metal thread through it to keep it in place. The metal is then folded over into shape at an angle, the cotton thread loops around it again to fix its position, the metal is folded over…and so on. The metal stays on top of the surfact, while you can see the cotton thread running at the back. I’ll be trying this technique with the next batch of kendo-gi or vintage French factory workwear I get. There is a special double hole needle meant for this metal that has been so hard to source, otherwise we could have used the running stitch method which would make things very easy!

Litrahb Perfumery

It’s that time of the year again! The Devil’s Tree (Alstonia scholaris) is in bloom from October onwards, so right before Diwali through to Winter next year, the cold air is thick with smog, fire-cracker pollution, and the disgustawful smell of thousands upon thousands of Saptaparni blossoms. (Sapta means seven, and Parni, I guess, means leaves?)

Every winter since I moved to my new place in 2019, I picked up on this overwhelmingly appealing-but-repulsive smell at night of black cardamom and leather. Knowing how loud India is in terms of scented cleaning products, I thought it must be a type of heavily scented mosquito fumigation. Three years later, as I was walking down the road, I came face to face with low hanging bunch of blooms on an untrimmed tree — Yuck! It’s THIS flower!!!!

I got single branch home and smelled it in my sterile air-purifier environment. This time, the scent revealed itself to be a bit cleaner - jasmine grandiflorum, cardamom, fennel, oakwood, and a hint of leather. I considered it and created the “Saptaparni” perfume while keeping it true to my experience by including a fire-cracker-smoke-pollution note. A terribly dirty night-floral! I have avoided reformulating a fresh batch this year because I can’t tell you how much I hate this accord. It’s in heavy in the air since last week which means I cannot step out for a walk in the late evening/night.

In the last two months, however, I have been receiving so many enquiries only about Saptaparni, I just rolled my eyes and tried redirecting everyone to other perfumes with no luck. I suppose this is a very specific smell experience of people who have grown up in India/South Asia. Mostly, Bengalis tend to ask for this perfume and I can understand, Calcutta smells like this in Winter because the trees line the roads and boulevards. Apparently this tree grows abundantly in West Bengal, Bihar, Karnataka and the Andaman Islands.

Maybe tapping into this nostalgic note has not been made possible as these flowers cannot be distilled. And ofcourse, French perfumery is far away from South Asian sensibilities. Look up “Carnal Flower” or any other perfume made by a European or American perfumer, the “dirtiest” floral they can fathom are tuberoses and jasmines, and their repertoire begins and ends there. As the Global North exports their trash to the coast-lines of nations in the Global South, so their environment can remain clean, green, and technologically advanced and “eco-friendly” while we export our best tea, botanical extracts, textiles and all fine luxury raw materials. I feel rather depressed that our experience of the Saptaparni — fennel, cardamom, allspice and treebark — is tainted with the smell of burning garbage and tar.

While those are the notes I stuck with since first formulating this perfume in 2022, this time, I have left it clean and sweet. We deserve a better world, and maybe this new Saptaparni perfume gets a clean break!

Order it here!

French Mechanic Grease (perfume)

I’m slowly making my way with a gold thread through the third French 1950s work wear jacket. Two are already up for sale on the Apparel section on my website. Check in later this week!

Also, my order of 60 saffron crocus bulbs have arrived this week! I’m conducting a talk/ workshop mid December at the Serendipity Arts Festival where I will be gifting attendees a bulb each along with a small “soil” perfume! “Will you actually be there in person, for real, in real life?” - Yes! So many who have bought perfume from me over the years have never met me or seen me or knows anyone who has actually seen me. Am I even real? Or am I a unicorn bot online?

Six years of being persistent paid off!

Those of you who know me personally know how complain-y I am about the Uncle-men of my condominium-complex. Earlier this year, I finally got permission to use a small plot for my garden experiment. I could plant whatever I wanted as long I didn’t ask the Management Committee for a budget.

In our newly built gleaming urban utopia, we had adequate grounds for growing all sorts of herbs and flora but a few retired uncles-in-charge decided that everything had to be ornamental and definitely no fruiting trees! The reasons were totally stupid: fruits will fall on the ground, make a mess and attract rodents…People will fight over said fruits…people will destroy fruit-plants…they will steal all the plants and pluck all the flowers…our efforts will be wasted, so don’t even start this nonsense.

I felt rather sad that there was an instinctive perception of our neighbours as horrible people so no good deed should be done for our collective benefit. We have been stuck with ornamental “green” plants around parcels of water-sucking lawns that barely cope with the extreme heat and the extreme rain. A handful men — who I suspect do not contribute to any household labour — made decisions to ban edible plants, so not even a curry-leaf tree was to be planted on our large estate. The lawn, as one uncle explained to me, was important as a “photo point”.

I think there is some internalised exoticism around 18th century European lawns that has a hold over the still-colonial mindset of South Asians. The new urban pure non-veg Hindu uncle wants to signal class. The dirty rural villages need to be left behind because we are developed now. Peasants can sacrifice their land, their labour, their produce, to Ambani and Adani for the development of India— just hand over to the corporate overlords and die instead of protesting and being a nuisance.

Congress accuses government of ‘gifting’ 1,050 acres of land in Bihar’s Bhagalpur to Gautam Adani

Addressing a press conference at the party’s headquarters here, the Congress’s media and publicity department head, Pawan Khera, claimed that in Bhagalpur’s Pirpainti in Bihar, 1,050 acres of land has been allocated to industrialist Gautam Adani for setting up a power plant at ₹1 per year for 33 years. (There are hundreds of thousands of trees such as teak, litchi and mango that will be cut. The power plant is slated to sell the electricity back to the peasants at Rs. 4/unit)

Wait! What was I saying?

OK! So earlier this year, some aunties and uncles agitated over our building Whatsapp group for a “Ram Mandir”, an Ayodhya style Modi-temple, to be established on the ground. The issue got so loud, I intervened with some common sense- your religious beliefs are your private matter, establish a temple in your own homes, no need to impose this onto our multi-faith, diverse residential society. Well, aunty retorted that she does not believe in “fake secularism” and that India is a Hindu majority country. I left the Whatsapp group right after. Why should I care? I didn’t grow up here or live here until recently.

When I first moved into these new flats in 2019, I noticed the Islamophobic messages being shared on the common group. One particularly prolific uncle shared a post about a white American military woman (Tulsi Gabbard) as a champion of Hindu values. I wrote a letter to the Committee urging them to curtail this communal hatred being stoked. I found out a little later that that persistent Muslim-hater was an elderly man who had made his livelihood and wealth in the Gulf. He was recently retired and probably bored and lonely living in India.

Obvious hypocrisy aside, this demand-for-temple case was no doubt a reflection of a group of people who clearly yearned for community but only if it centred around an activity that did not ask much of them. Were they going to volunteer for the underprivileged or engage in philanthropic work to make peoples lives better? No. But this matter got heated so quickly that an emergency in-person vote was organised. I was going to stay home and mind my own business - who wants to deal with lunatics on a Sunday!

“Please come down fast, we need your vote. Are you coming?!”.

On the day however, I got three panicked calls from other residents, two were uncles who had said no to my garden proposal in 2019. The third was a (Hindu) aunty who emigrated from Pakistan with her husband in the early 1990s. They all wanted to know that I would be there to vote NO.

Wait, I’m not writing about perfume and luxury today but I will get there because I learned something valuable here. While the Whatsapp group sounded like an enormous mob, the offline-in person meeting gathered barely 28 flat owners. Online: too many, too loud, too forceful. Offline: quiet, reasonable people showed up and only two dimwits who said things like “we need temple for the good vibes…you know, vibrations?” after it was made clear that we would lose security on our premises as we would have to let anyone in to visit the public temple and that we would actually lose real estate value on our land.

I’d like to say those two idiots were boomers, but no, they were probably in their late thirties, younger than me! They were not going to contribute to the logistics of having a temple but wanted to enjoy a religious win without putting anything personal at stake. Losers!

Right after our vote, the two uncles who had panicked and called me, approached me to admit they were wrong to refuse my edible garden proposal six years back, and that I could now plan a garden!

There must be a God!

After that it took them six months to decide internally which spot could be handed over to me. Finally, I began in July! The soil on this 25 foot long sun-lit plot was tilled by our gardener; I brought roses, figs, kari-patta, bananas, Assam Lime and some garlic lilies to plant. Last month, I got narcissus, daffodil and saffron bulbs. These are beginning to sprout. Two weeks back, I went to a far away nursery to buy vetiver grass, allspice, bay leaf, betel leaf, buddleja, one jasmine creeper, one geranium, a pair of Brazilian button plants that are currently blooming with the most vibrant purple flowers. The line of seven roses are thriving and producing bud after bud despite the nonstop monsoons. Yesterday, some ginger was planted. Abundant dead neem leaves are being transformed into compost so I never have to buy soil or pay for fertiliser. Next week I will go back to that special nursery to pick up more native plants along with a lotus and a waterlily.

So…has the garden been raided and destroyed? Have the flowers and karipatta leaves been pillaged? Did anyone complain? Not yet! I felt that this issue is so low-stakes and doesn’t hurt the small budget I live with on a day to day basis. Let people come and pluck as many flowers as they like, I can always plant more roses!

I am often berated for being too naive, too idealistic (dumb), too uncompromising… I mean this has been a life long criticism received from all who are close to or far from me. I suspect it is because I don’t hold any distinctive social position, or make much money or that I very stupidly sell perfume without following corporate conventions. And also because I complain too much and too loudly. Have I told you enough times about my hatred for academics and museum people? I hate this class of elites who grift and steal. I especially hate people who defend these thieves (and I guess I envy their solidarity because I am outside and all on my own?). Sometimes, this type of criticism catches me when I am at my most sensitive, but my ambitions are just different. I want everyone to have a nice garden, to be surrounded by the luxury of clean air and water. I want a world of butterflies.

If this experiment goes awry, it’s fine, it’s just plants. But if things go well, as they already are, I plan to slowly spill out of “my” plot to vanquish the lawn.

Anyways, buy some perfume so I can splurge on plants!

Other news:

1. Since October 2023, I have answered the call for the Global Economic Strike. the days keep shifting, but it is now every Thursday. I spend no money and accept no transactions on Thursdays.

2. I have taken a few steps to remove my data from Google, and registered a new email ID on Protonmail.

3. I have stopped posting on Instagram, so all news about my work/life is here on Substack, on www.litrahbperfumery.com + www.baghehind.com

4. I post plant updates on UpScrolled: same handle

5. The 1950s-60s Factory worker jackets arrived from France two weeks back, I then sent then to Goa to get a fresh indigo dye. they’re back and look incredible! I have to give them one more wash, iron them, photograph them, put it online…but check in with me if you want a peek at the photos, sizes and prices!

LITRAHB PERFUMERY

Continuing the conversation from my previous “Quiet Luxury, Shhh!”,…

Once I finished working on the two Japan-sourced Kendo jackets and put them up on my Shop, I thought about the next set I would like to work on. Quickly my mind went to La Grosse Toile on Substack. Hannah combs through small villages and towns across France to source obscure damask textiles, embroidered serviettes, beads, lace, and garments from the 1900s onwards. She examines, dates, catalogues them on her website for acquisition. (She also regularly raises funds for Gaza so please click below to her site).

LA GROSSE TOILE

Once I made up my mind about buying the two short blue work jackets and two long overcoats made in the 1940, 50s and 60s, I did a search for “vintage workwear” online. I found that these type of garments from China, America and France, original and reproduced, are highly sought after by the dreaded Hipster. Why were these simple looking, simple-design labourers’ clothes built to withstand rough wear and tear, dirt, grease and sweat, sought after by the white collar Managerial Class?!

The Blue collar working class— their collective bargaining power for their decent wages, their health, their quality family life, their homes, their pensions and their future generations’ assets have been long eroded by Capitalist-war-mongering Parasites but their clothes are still so desirable?!!

Look at how these patterns reproduced by a designer are labelled and priced: The Railway Ranger Tool Jacket, The Engineer’s Coat, The Dockworker’s Overcoat! (The actual dock workers of today are repeatedly threatening to go on strike, and actively refusing to load shipments of weapons bound for Israel).

The Dispatch Guy-jacket, The Chore Jacket! This reminds me of the deliriously priced Lyn Harris’ “The Perfumer’s Jacket” that I mentioned in my last newsie (₤600!!!).

This is not high fashion, it’s minimal utilitarian garments built for factory workers and mechanics. So what exactly is being sold here? — the fantasy of the humble working man? Is humility the value-add?

I wondered if the wealthy appropriating the simplistic style of the lower classes is a recent trend but I think this may have always been the case throughout history. Vaguely, I remembered reading about the Mughal elite burying their gold, shutting their homes and dressing “poor” during a specific regime-change time in the Empire. I went back to find that piece of scholarship in case I was wrong!

The Emperor’s Humbler Clothes: Textures of Courtly Dress in Seventeenth-­century South Asia

Sylvia Houghteling

Here is an extract:

In his 1641 autobiography, the Jain merchant Banarasidas described the ways in which the texture of life changed in the north Indian city of Jaunpur following news of the death of Emperor Akbar in 1605. “The people, bereft of their emperor, felt orphaned and hopeless,” he wrote.[1] The wealthy feared that chaos would descend; they buried their jewelry and sealed their doors. They also changed their attire:

Men began to wear plain clothes

And casting off fine shawls, wrapped themselves in rough blankets

The women too began to dress plainly.[2]

Conditions returned to normal ten days later, when the news spread that Prince Salim, Akbar’s son, had ascended to the throne as Emperor Jahangir and now reigned throughout the Mughal Empire. Yet in this passage of his autobiography, Banarasidas revealed the clothing habits of Jaunpur in more precise terms than are typically available for non-­imperial cities in early modern South Asia. Banarasidas does not name the fabrics donned by the rich in order to appear poor. It seems to have been more significant to his reader that he repeat twice that the texture of these garments was moṭā, an adjective that can mean “plump” and “wealthy” but also implies “thick,” “rough,” and “coarse.” He writes that instead of wearing khes, fine shawls or thin cotton cloths, the rich took to wearing kambals, or blankets. The women, too, donned clothing that was moṭā. […]

Banarasidas’s comments suggest that for a seventeenth-­century merchant who had traveled to Agra, the rich began to resemble the poor not when they wore textiles of an inferior fiber but when they abjured from cloths of a pleasing texture. In the sensibility of the seventeenth century, the basest cloth was that which was “thick” and “rough,” “harsh” and “coarse” to the touch.

Sylvia Houghteling (an exceptional scholar on textiles of the Mughal period), stresses the significance of the sensory experience embedded within garments even if they were plain unadorned light-as-air transparent cotton textile. Colour saturation and depth, the softness of velvet versus the coarse feel of wool, or the cold metallic sparkle of gold embroidery threads are all explored and discussed in this highly recommended essay.

But, as per usual, the scent-experience of these materials is always a missing piece in academic discourse. Nevermind lah, that’s why we’re here — I have an idea!

First, I already made a scent translation of Mughal era “Pashmina & Mul” based on Sylvie’s descriptions. See notes on this part of the page in my sensory-history project.

Second, let’s come back to those idealist blue-collar, blue-coloured marxist-socialist worker jackets. I acquired four pieces that I am going to send to Goa to my Indigo textile dyer pal (also French) to saturate their special cobalt blue. I will then repair and mend the garments; and then, I go hard on the artistic embellishments using gold threads and some real silver elements.

Third, a perfume to match will be paired with each vintage jacket. The scent of the French factory worker - cigarettes, gasoline, sweat, and grease. It’s not impossible at all. In my notes, this fantasy scent is composed with pyrazines, vetiver and spikenard that provide the dirty-earthy-gasoline, then comes the tobacco absolute that suffocates the greasy clary sage, violet leaf and lavender absolute. Choke on that Hipsters!

I was very light handed with the Kendo jackets that arrived from Osaka two weeks back. The quality and the thread-work of all three are second to none. The first two are on the Shop, the third one is SO beautiful, I am keeping it for myself. As usual everything I put up for sale will be a unique piece. Maybe some “Indigo” coloured soap would also be a nice pairing to craft.

Natural indigo-dyed Kendo tops are designed with short sleeves and a long length as it is meant to be tucked into the pants. The indigo-suede-metal helmet, armour and gloves go over it weighing down the body. It is difficult to understand that one has to carry that heavy weight and jump to strike their heavy bamboo sword on repeat while screaming to intimidate the opponent. For a quiet introvert like me that part, not the heaving weight, was the hardest. Lastly, here is a photo of me in my Kendo uniform in August 2022. Since my Ben-sensei went back to Malaysia, it has been very difficult to keep up practice. But those real life classes during that year helped me get through so much re/dejection. It hasn’t been so much about the style or look of the Kendo-uniform, but more the philosophical approach and emotional discipline behind this defensive practice that sustain new possibilities for me as a critic-perfumer.

Litrahb Perfumery

In the past month, Indians on Instagram have been expressing their frustration at Prada and Dior for stealing appropriating borrowing garment-styles, techniques, materials, and even slippers being showcased on the runway and sold for quite the eye-popping price-tag!

This season, Prada is selling a pair of traditional Kolhapuri leather slippers for $1200. Dior is weaving real gold muqaish threads into their coats valued at $200,000 ++ a pop.

Kolhapuri row: Prada speaks up about Indian slipper scandal

“They did not credit us” - Who is us?

The global south has been busy crafting luxury goods for centuries but as the Empire’s engine chugs along, South Asian workers, particularly women, the lower castes, and disenfranchised muslim communities have found themselves in an ever-expanding loop of exploitation by international and domestic (Indian) markets.

Along with this outrage, a low key panic has also set into the upper caste aunties and uncles who gate-keep their sources as best they can: Where is the next generation of weavers and perfume distillers with the intimate know-how of the craft going to come from?

Today, I want to full on complain about these Indians. They are the first to exploit, cheapen, de-value, demoralise local makers, artists and artisans until ofcourse an institution, a museum, or a capitalist venture in Europe or USA advertises their patronage. (This colonial plague is not unique to Indians of course, I witnessed these symptoms very closely in pedagogy and art collecting when I was a critic living and working in Southeast Asia.)

From the very moment I wrote my first newsletter to you, my reader-friends, I insisted on opening up the gates for us as we are being short-changed on every front. It’s the simple things — clean air, gardens, decent public infrastructure, good food, perfume, and long lasting well-made clothing. Basic everyday things can be luxurious and should not cost the earth.

My own sparkling outrage filters into making opulent perfume or productively goes into constructing a magnificent public access digital garden. I have made no bones about the fact that my art historical perfume-garden project emerges from a pure hatred of this segment of elite people. My many personal interactions with generally well-meaning academics have taught me a valuable lesson on how openly they perpetuate class-warfare by freezing out anyone working on the margins.

And can I tell you - I can count on one hand the number of people who buy perfume from me in India. They don’t support my practice but they’re here to offer free advice: “work on your packaging and lower your prices”. Or worse, they ask me to make them (cheap) copies of Le Labo or Diptyque. Fools have no discerning ability but new money fools are very special. They don’t know how to perceive themselves, they don’t know what taste or luxury means unless their bodies are emblazoned with recognizable logos.

Anyways, let’s move on to see this Dior jacket that I thought was spectacular. If every type of craft originates here and is manufactured for export just like natural perfume raw materials, then I should go looking:

Dior’s Couture Shines With Indian Mukaish Priced Over A Whopping Crore, Sparks Outrage

I began existing in India in 2013, but I traveled overseas so often till 2019, I never bought clothing here. However, 2021 onwards I needed a new set of garments and it has been a nightmare to find well-cut, well fitting clothes.

A number of designers that have since sprung up but clothes for women remain utterly horrible and expensive! Even after spending good money on designer clothing (on sale), my unhappy customer experience with the esteemed man-behind-the-brand, meant that I chose to cut up, alter and frankly, improve the clothes myself. I don’t know how to use the sewing machine but I know the mighty running stitch!

After multiple experiments and especially spending hours embellishing this zari-silk handwoven-ethical-sustainable-single-origin-queer-weaver-community-upliftment-luxury-brand sari to the extent that it actually looks expensive, I decided it was time to try my hand at offering apparel alongside my bespoke perfume service.

Bold, surely, but I remembered that around 2022, Lyn Harris/ Perfumer H began selling clothing — a simple cotton linen jacket, a simple cotton shirt… I went back to visit her website to refresh my memory. And what I found was shocking!

The Perfumer’s Jacket is priced USD 809! A simple cotton shirt is around USD 675! I like Lynn’s minimalist approach but this is hysterical! That said, if any of my readers do indeed spend this much on t-shirts, please kindly send your money my way! Thank you!

When I read about the Dior jacket, I wondered what was “Mukesh thread” or “Muqaish embroidery” that was causing such an uproar, I found several Hindi/Urdu tutorials online. I instantly recognised it from my childhood! These “threads” have been embedded in our Indian clothing, our shimmery duppattas, in my mom's chiffon saris from the 1980s. This craft, from what I understood, emerged in the Mughal period and embroiderers in Lucknow still specialise in this slow and tedious technique. Once the “badla” work is completed, workers beat it into place. I am often left stunned at how such intricate and rich craft has come into existence, by whose calloused hands weave such magic, and at our loss of such luxury!

In Pune, Maharashtra, this sort of thing was hard to come by, but after asking at several shops in the old neighbourhood where I get my excessively decorative glass flacons made, I got a tip. From a hole-in-the-wall shop run by an old uncle, I bought zari (gold thread), some silver muqaish threads, some real silver bells and a bobbin of gotta-patti (metallic) ribbon. And for good measure, I picked up a pair of deity-eyes that I usually, playfully, stick onto my 15ml perfume flacons for my bespoke commissions.

Enjoy the images of my jaunt below, and please stay tuned as I am working with a local design workshop to reproduce my indigo dyed Japan-made kendo-gi top as a jacket-prototype. I will be embellishing and embroidering discrete elements on each one myself. These one-off garments will come with a 3ml perfume for that extra-sensory experience — a monsoon cloud motif and a monsoon cloud perfume for instance. More soon!

Litrahb Perfumery

I swear by these Chinese medicated/ mentholated-to-the-max oils that come in very dainty glass flasks with strong plastic caps that I am always reluctant to throw away once they’re empty. Same with the nostalgic Tiger Balm glass jars!

Last month, while I was browsing AliBaba for a leak-proof option so that I could phase out my roller-ball attar bottles, I stumbled onto these miniature flacons on sale and much to my delight the Minimum Order Quantity was just a hundred! I also spotted some Tiger Balm jars that I wanted to buy from the Chinese manufacturer but their MOQ is much much higher.

As I keep reminding my well meaning friends who tell me to scale up and “do packaging”, I’m a very very small scale producer. I simply do not have enough money, means and resources to do more. And I don’t want to do more. I love producing small scale perfume artworks that do not compare to mass manufactured perfumes.

This commercial category of product has to be watered down in order to comply with stringent safety standards that ultimately exclude the rich and complex natural ingredient palette while increasing options on aroma chemicals. In this low-cost high-volume model, every formulation and its dilution is calculated down to the decimal by industry software. Now we are describing an object and its value determined by technology and market forces. Not art.

I make art, so asking me to scale up is like asking me, a fish, to invest in a bicycle, to compete in a race on land, where the prize is plastic rice produced by a billionaire.

Mutant Rice and Lab Rats: Bill Gates Sparks Outrage After Referring to India as ‘Testing Ground’ for Experiments

by GMWatch, May 21, 2025

At ten cents per 9ml flacon, I could afford to skip this competition entirely and continue swimming upstream on my own. Now let me show you these ridiculously adorable flasks!

I continue using my handwritten sticker labels on the bottles and neon paper wrappers to keep things simple. This month on, perfumes come in these cutie bottles, 9ml instead of 6ml, and still at the same price!

You know, each time, at various points in my career, I have (almost) cried at not having “proper” things for building a business— money, connections, family networks like an “uncle” who can help, but I gave myself that five minute pity-scene, so that I can go back to refining my critique and concepts to the point of intellectual and aesthetic sturdiness. The whole point of my practice — as an art critic or perfumer — is to give you the literal taste and scent of a luxurious world that is not yet lost.

Now let me show you the level of artistry I accomplished to create “Butter” with limited access to perfumery materials. (This too is an issue of scale - manufacturers in India sell by the kilo and it is the small relationships I have struck with handful industry people who can locally provide me some special materials in under 20 grams. So, my perfumery practice operates at a limited scope than so called Niche Perfumers in the global north).

BUTTER!!!

I’m going to disclose all the luxurious (and costly) materials I used to formulate this impossible sensory experience!

The foundation of this perfume is composed of natural ingredients: Nutmeg butter, Myrrh, Ambrette CO2, Fenugreek CO2, Hemidesmus indicus CO2, Sandalwood CO2, Sandalwood oil and Orris butter. Beeswax, Tonka bean diluted with a touch of ghee and maltol. Agarwood, Coumarine, Potato pyrazine and Hazelnut pyrazine add a floating toasty, popcorn sensation. Almost like you have a fresh baguette toasting in the oven! Synthetic heliotrope and chrysanthemum add a layer of freshness (as opposed to a staleness) and buttery creaminess.

Now, if you prefer your “Butter” smoked, then I can add a touch more pyrazines to tickle your nose-brain! This is a perfume suitable to colder climates but I have been wearing this in Pune where it is currently monsoon-y and humid, layered with my Smoked Patchouli perfume. It has made me feel very electric with hope and possibility.

I am always complaining, but turning to a perfumer from an art critic has been the best decision I have made. My practice and the way it has resonated with an audience has filled me with such affirmation, I am never plagued by a feeling of incompetence. Infact, sharpening my nose-brain has made further visible the many interconnected structures that are profiting off our sense of helplessness-worthlessness. No, we are not going to spend a minute more doing them the service of thinking we don’t matter.

Litrahb Perfumery

One last thing: Please read this recent essay by Lily Kelting on the colloquial connotations of friendship in the marathi and broadly South Asian context:

“Dubai Return” was a constant phrase I kept hearing when I was growing up in Lagos, Nigeria in the late 1980s. “Dubai” was always part of conversations between the grown-ups. Did someone’s son return to India from his seemingly lucrative job in Dubai? Well, his name would proceed with a suffix: “Dubai Return”! I mean, “Lagos Return” never held any currency at all. Our poor problems of inconsistent electricity and running water supply, armed robberies, military coups, oil prices collapsing or whatever Henry Kissinger decided would be our country’s fate that day held no appeal to the vetiver cooler-cooled relative drinking rose sherbet in a steel glass back home.

Maybe “London Return” held some allure but everyone knew that sons and the daughters who married them, going off to western countries were suffering. No servants! No drivers! No support! No savings! Bad climate! And so far away! No visa! No air ticket!

When we used to come to India for our yearly vacations, I always heard gossip about “Dubai”. There was some Bombay don who escaped to this Emirate where he might have (allegedly) paid off Bollywood actresses to come dance for him or something. Whatever it was, the bottomline was always the same: Indians (and South Asians in general) who left pre-liberalised India for Dubai, returned with abundance guaranteed! Social mobility, upliftment out of difficult circumstances was assured!

And what of those who didn’t live there? Well, as soon as airline routes via Dubai opened up, it was time to transit through to buy gold for weddings in India. Till today my mother says, “we earned so much, we bought so much, we gave so much away. If only, we had held on to that wealth instead of giving it to all the relatives!”. This is a common theme in South Asian families, uplifting needy yet ungrateful relatives!

We tell ourselves these stories, but it’s no one’s fault. Times all around were extremely difficult and if one could afford to help, they did. I think that this generation’s spirit of community, responsibility, duty and selflessness is what we ought to recognise, rather than fixate on the lack…of everything. Just between 1960-1980 India was going through war, famine, and deep political turmoil. And before that, between 1940-50s, well, everyone lost everything in the Partition. Material and spiritual scarcity made it difficult to foster love and break generational burdens.

On my holiday the last two weeks, I asked my dad about his old pals from his Lagos days who had long retired and settled in Dubai. We marvelled at how much money they must have made in order to afford a retired lifestyle there! And then we laughed at how dull and boring their lives are coddled in comfort. Too much hot-heat? Enter the Mall of Emirates, Habibi, there is AC. The whole time I was reminded of my experience living in Singapore, the Air condition nation that learned so hard from Dubai it ended up becoming the poor man’s Switzerland! Read here the excellent critiques of political thinker and author of “Air Condition Nation”, George Cherian:

Anyways, I had such a relaxing vacation for two weeks. For the first time since 2019, I was not on some hurried press trip being bussed from art fair to gallery to restaurant to museum to hotel, to write about the art in the UAE. I could just let my old life as an art critic fade. I’m a perfumer now, Oooooo!

My most disappointing experience - and the reason I was reminded so much about my life in Singapore - was the fact that the city demands you spend extra, extra, just a little more extra, on the least substantive return. No value for money. My uncle and aunt who came from Hong Kong, wanted to see all the sights with my parents including the Perfume Museum, Museum of the Future (both in Dubai) and The Louvre (Abu Dhabi). I wanted to skip all except The Louvre. On our first day, we went to The Frame. We deliberated if we wanted to buy a ticket after all. It was costly, it was hot, and was it worthwhile? We stood in a queue for an hour exposed in the high noon sun to be finally let inside the lobby and pushed in front of a photo booth by an usher who said no doubt by rote, “Expeeeeerience, Enjooooy, It’s freee”. The photographer snapped our photo and on we were pushed further to the elevator that took us up to the top to enjoy the views of Dubai city, and then pushed along to buy bready snacks from a Japanese brand cafe as we took in the sights. My uncle who had lived for a stretch in Japan, glanced around and said matter of factly, “Tokyo tower is better. They explain the context of all the buildings and locations we can see.” Sigh.

When we stood in line for the elevator down, and descended that final escalator, those “Enjoy, it’s free” photos were on display and they were not free. I hoped they would destroy our images that they took without our will. After this experience, we sent our uncle to go alone to The Museum of the Future as only he seemed enthusiastic to spend on the exorbitant ticket. It was a Wednesday and as it turned out, the museum was sold out till Sunday! I don’t know how a museum sells out of tickets but…ok.

The Louvre: I had been to the Louvre on a press trip shortly after it opened some years back. I had my criticisms then, but nevermind. I emailed the Press office beforehand to share my credentials to arrange a press pass so I did not have to buy a ticket. The museum responded with a ticket:

On the day, the security scanned this barcode several times but it was still invalid. No one at the counter seemed to know if The Louvre had a Press Office! I was advised to step outside the museum, walk some distance in the hot-heat to the Information Counter where I could “argue (my) case”.

We were on a tight schedule, so I asked them to call someone from the PR/Press office. To my utter disbelief, the staff asked me for a phone number! What! I emailed the Press Office again, but till today no one has written back to me with an explanation (or an apology). I suspect that was a fake ticket generated to fob me off. The security guard told me that this was not the first time such a thing has happened.

After this total waste of time, my uncle and aunt kindly bought me a ticket. As we were on a tight schedule, for the next 30 minutes, we sped through the museum searching for the exit, glancing here and there at the “nice statues from our country”, ending up in the gift shop where the most hideous items cheerfully greeted us!

These institutions are so far from their mission that they offered no concessions to the press, to the students, or to senior citizens who visit from overseas. The museum itself was designed to overwhelm visitors with the architecture, rather than the art. Anyone who speaks to me about this museum, ONLY ever talks about the architecture and never the art. Don’t ask critical questions, just gasp in awe at the ceiling and take your photos, peasant!

Long queues met us at various points where the museum photographer could take glamour shots of visitors by the jetty. The lavish displays of consumer goods at the mall was understandable to me. But the excessive pilfering of the public by a public institution was not. After that, I that I felt my time was better spent sight seeing at the malls. Muji offers better cultural value than this. It’s free to look and I bought a beautiful made-in-Japan porcelain teapot (and a made-in-Cambodia denim). As for my personal shopping, I went into Waitrose and M&S to stock up on olive oil, jam, tinned fish, balsamic vinegar and dark chocolate truffles. The lemons, limes, Palestinian olives and Turkish coffee were a bonus!

On my last day, the galleries on Al Serkal avenue were opening their exhibitions ahead of Art Dubai fair. I had half heartedly intended to go, to “make some effort”, but fortunately my friend had to take a rain check and I decided I’d rather have a nap.

I did love the old side of Dubai, long walks while viewing the sunset by the creek, eating pakoras freely offered by Indian and Pakistani vendors, hawking in friendly competition side by side. No karak chai, because I am allergic to dairy. I smelled enough bread to not feel so bad about my gluten intolerance as well. And, I just relaxed. And yawned. Alot.

I’ve thought about the simple pleasures Dubai still offers and what I wanted to embody in this quaint idea of “Dubai Return”. It’s a perfume with very gentle notes of Rose (syrup), chamomile (tea), coffee, cumin/spice and saffron. The formulation will be ready in a week, please reply back if you’d like to order a 6ml bottle for $75. Until next time!

Litrahb Perfumery

It’s Spring but here in Pune, Maharashtra, we have had heatwave upon heatwave. It has been too hot to function, I keep falling behind on preparing peoples’ perfumey parcels and my brain has suffered a few glitches. Yet, despite the wilting, I have managed to accomplish a few things. I spruced up my website so the landing page reflects the current season and mood through an eighteenth century folio from Rajasthan. And the Shop page is better organised.

At the top section of our gorgeous art historical painting, the sun is drawn with sharp protruding rays that seemingly zapped the trees of moisture and life. The lack of foliage and shade has left the deer exposed to the four hunters who also appear to be struggling against the sweltering high-noon heat. The hunters rest under the shade of the only green and dense leafy tree, perhaps they splash some water on the towels on their heads while one of them takes a nap.

I have come to love this genre of paintings, not for the depictions of opulence and luxury of the elite but for the ordinary pleasures of ordinary folks that the artists chose to illustrate. Many a folio show figures of men napping in a garden or camping sites under the shade of trees!

“Naptime” is an entire chapter devoted to representations of resting and “doing nothing” within my project Bagh-e Hind.

There are numerous olfactory cues in our chosen painting. The scent of the sun, heat, animal fur, dried leaf, tree trunks, twigs, bark and dust flying in the hot salty air, are combined in a perfume I made a while back called “Sandstone”. With orris root and vetiver root extract, the salt, bitter, ground-nut, dirt and dust notes are accentuated to remind one of the spores that are dormant within the earth, waiting for moisture to hit so they can release notes of petrichor into the air.

In stark contrast to the leafless forest, the lower register of this summer-season illustration appears visually lush. Inside a hut made from hay and vetiver grass, four women, perhaps unrelated to the four hunters, enjoy a melodious afternoon surrounded by a cool enclave of well watered trees, a water fountain, and a lotus pond. To the far right, edging out of the frame, is the kewra plant creeping out from under a canopy of banana trees. Taking inspiration from these paintings, and from my Bagh co-curator’s gardening practice, I have finally had some success growing banana trees in my abundantly sunny bedroom. (They previously failed in my sun-less terrace). So in some way, I can “sleep under the shade of banana leaves” just like in these paintings. (Look out for the “Banana leaf” perfume I made last year that is still in stock).

Oh, I got distracted again! I was discussing the Summer folio because I wanted to talk about the scent of petrichor, mitti or geosmin. Every summer and monsoon, I formulate “Mitti” that captures the scent of rain. Most people are familiar with this fragrance because there are several articles on the internet, lavishing praise on this type of south Asian olfactory heritage. But I think that it is a touristy novelty item. The perfume distilled from clay cups and vessels is very faint and useless in building perfumery accords. Western perfumers will try to convince you otherwise, because it is indeed an exotic note. But come on, let’s really get into the wet soil rain-dirt notes. It’s too hot, and I need something light and watery.

“Mitti” radiates with the familiar fragrance of thunder clouds rolling in to dispel the unrelenting heat of the summer. This is the smell of moisture in the atmosphere, of soil anticipating raindrops that have yet to arrive. This year, I have used the following perfumery materials: Vetiver, a light dilution of geosmin, violet leaf absolute, lavender absolute, oakmoss, sandalwood, agarwood, ambergris, blended into a green grass and lotus pond accord.

Despite the heat induced dysfunction, I have also managed to continue my soap experiments. My friend Simar Puneet sent me this mould for a goldfish and asked me to try placing a soap-fish inside a transparent soap-block. Yesterday, i got the colours and transparency just right and I thought that more than an innocent goldfish this is reminding me of the movie JAWS. For 80s kids like me, this was peak trauma!

The soap work is not listed on my website because I’m spontaneous about it. I make it if I feel like making it. Or if someone commissions me to make a box of soaps with different scents and shapes, that’s fun! Readers can hit reply on this newsie to commission me. Perfume may be too expensive and fickle to choose but a box of soapies may just be low-stakes delightful! I offer international shipping via FedEx at a flat rate of $75. Even though these rates keep climbing, I absorb the cost to keep things as accessible as possible.

Now that I’m doing well, I’m being a bit brave and splurging on expensive materials. Last week I ordered 25 grams each of Jasmine grandiflorum and Jasmine Sambac CO2 extracts. I will formulate Edible Perfume with these and work on a new idea for a “Nocturnal Jasmine”, a perfume that radiates with a full on floral boom! I have disliked all the commercial jasmine perfumes I have smelled so far, and I want a Jasmine I can sink my teeth into!

Also, since I am finally out of struggle-life mode, I am taking my first holiday in about five years. I will be in Dubai for two weeks from 1st to 14th April. If you’d like to say hi and smell some perfume over coffee, let me know. I’m there to see family but I will make an effort :)

Litrahb Perfumery

Sometimes I have to work backwards from an idea, then sideways, forward, then backwards again.

Last month I wanted to revive an old concept sitting in my brain. What I needed were the ceramic pair of eyes meant to be affixed on deities that I had used before on a custom perfume bottle for my sister to playfully depict her judge-y glare.

These hand-painted pairs of eyes are set on copper. They come in different sizes and shapes. They are meant for tiny baby Krishna idols, and slightly larger ones are affixed on for progressively bigger statues. Some even come with diamond studded eyebrows, or a silver moustache for a male deity.

The best ones though, are pairs designed for angry goddesses! Tilted at a slant, like thin crescent moons, pupils at the centre, appear to glare down upon us. At first, I thought it funny to have a perfume flacon side-eyeing me, questioning all my life choices while I apply perfume on my wrists. Then it dawned on me that the eyes, true to their original intent and purpose, could transform the perfume itself into an invisible layer of fragrant protection that wafts around the wearer’s body. The reason netra-chakshu are glued onto stone or metal idols or even abstract blobs is to awaken them with divine power. Visually, an intimate connection is established, the deity witnesses the devotee’s unwavering faith as they journey through life.

I have been unsuccessful in finding out more about this traditional craft — who makes them, how and where are they made en masse, and why are they so difficult to source?! I went from shop to shop in the old part of Pune city to search for eyes but to no avail! I finally ordered a couple of pairs online. This concept was yet to click into place.

On another day, I visited the old lane of silver shops. Here I had a different type of luck! One uncle had silver plates of individual eyes, nose, tongue, and ears! I have never seen anything like it. From the little I could glean from the shopkeeper, these are sacred "goddess" objects that are kept at the alter, or brought out at certain auspicious occasions for worship. Ok, but which goddess? Sati, the first wife of Lord Shiva?

The silver dismembered eyes, nose, tongues, ears, hands, feet, I held in my hands prompted me to consider this familiar myth.

Sati hears her father has invited all the gods and goddesses to his kingdom to perform a special sacrifice/ yagya. She is puzzled that her husband, Lord Shiva has not been invited.

She goes to his palace on the day to confront her father. He takes the opportunity to insult Shiva further. He is afterall only the guardian of ghouls and snakes. Unable to tolerate such humiliation, she steps into the sacrificial fire.

Shiva finds her charred corpse, picks it up and descends into his dance of madness, scorching the planet in the process. As he moves, parts of Sati's body fall to the earth - eyes, brows, toes, feet, torso, fingers, hands, arms, ears, even her jewellery, her crown, wherever they fell, there sprung a mighty goddess.

While I mulled over this myth, I picked up as much silver as I could afford. Now the more difficult question: how to make it possible to experience Devi's fuming body, the wood-fire, embers and all? What kind of botanical extracts could represent such a sensitive yet potent theme? I had different parts but not the whole body quite yet. So I ran the concept by historian Nicolas Roth who instantly sent me the link to an early 19th century illustration of this exact tale. Titled “Shiva Carrying the Corpse of Sati on His Trident”, this watercolour is in the collection of Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), USA. This painting is not on public display and the label does not mention if it has ever been on view.

This painting has been so helpful as a visual aid to figure out how the perfume bottle should be adorned, which botanical ingredients should be used to construct this perfume, and why.

The animalic notes offer immediate olfactory cues - Shiva wears the skins of bear, leopard, and tiger. The snake slithered around his neck lends a marine-salty-seaweed note on top of the animal musk. The crescent moon over his thick matted locks, his forehead, chest and arms perhaps scented with sandalwood paste and ash. The metallic trident seared into the charred corpse of Sati, still hot to the touch, still fuming with the scent of incense, wood and camphor. As is illustrated in this painting, Sati chose simple adornments. Living in the hills and mountains away from civilisation, floral notes are absent. There are no cultivated roses here. Maybe she had picked a pink lotus to adorn her hair earlier in the day.

After some careful consideration, I kept the formulation very simple. Extracts of Pink Lotus, Tobacco and Spikenard are the key building blocks for the “Corpse”. Then come the civet, choya nakh (distilled onycha seashells), and ambergris for the animalic musk. Burnt woods and ash accords are built with vetiver, patchouli, opoponax, sandalwood, hiba-wood and balsam.

Each unique edition comes adorned with lightly glued silver facets. Just as in the myth, the silver ears, nose, eyes, lips, or tongue, fall off the corpse-bottle. I would encourage the wearer of this perfume, to take these sacred objects and turn them into talismans that can be worn as pendants, earrings, rings, etc.

“Corpse Flower” comes in a 15ml glass flacon. Each bottle is unique and is priced at USD 350 each. It’s easiest to reserve one by replying to this email. Later in the week I will update 3ml editions ($75 each) on my website.

Litrahb Perfumery

They arrived!!! The moulds for the Parle G biscuits! Just a few hours back!!!!

After making a successful batch of Toffee scented candles and savoury scented Noodles soap, I wanted to try making India’s household favourite low cost glucose biscuits, Parle G, as Soap! You can read about the history of these biscuits here. The machinery and technical knowledge of confectionery craft came to India from Germany in 1929. As I read this article, I remembered my school history lessons on proto-Nationalist movements emerging in British occupied India that looked towards the Empire’s enemies, mainly Japan and Germany, for military alliances, tactical know-how, weapons…and biscuits. It's complicated but India’s Parle G biscuits have satiated the poorest and wealthiest alike over decades.

I thought I would be playful as usual, and use these cheaptastic moulds meant for candle-making, for soap instead! Pack five biscuits in a butter paper packet just like the original 1960s-70s product, scent them with maltol, coumarine, vanillin and synthetic chocolate to amplify the burnt sugar-butter-flour notes so that it smells just like the actual biscuit itself!

To nail the baked biscuit colour was a little challenging. After a small 2 minute panic, the green dye, mixed with pink, orange, yellow, and red, and indeed turned into a delicious chai-brown! Phew!

I poured in approx 60 grams of melted shea butter soap base, the colour, the scent, all blended in and waited for a few minutes.

I stamped them at the back while they set…

…and squealed like a piglet as I took out the first “biscuit”!!!!

Cute little handsoap bars perfect for travel, packaged in butter paper. Just remember not to eat them!!!

I wanted to end the year on a sweet note. Everything is too heavy, I was searching and searching for some beauty and silliness.

I haven't decided yet how I want to price and sell them. I will make several batches of five bars and ship them off to London to my friend turned stockist, Fahad, so that the high shipping fees are no longer a hurdle for those based in the UK, EU and US. Currently, you can find some of my perfumes in stock on his website: https://litrahb.deansbottom.com/

I hope that all of you - friends, readers, and ok, some of you are hate-subscribers who are just here to track my G for Genius - will find something worthwhile, meaningful and beautiful to vest your hope and action in.

Early January I will turn a year older and my plans as usual are to stay home, avoid the pollution outside, and hang out with Koki, my sister's puppy. She's such a cute girl, she invents all kinds of games and I am often taken aback by her sense of fair and foul when I try to cheat a little!

Our favourite game is Godzilla-Godzilla! I stomp in a destructive manner like a giant dinosaur trying to chase her; then it's her turn to chase me while I run in mock-terror screaming “AaaahhhhGozeelaaaaa”!

I recently made her an excellent cedarwood-beeswax paw butter after realising how sus most of these strong-scented commercial pet products are! I know that if I tried just a little hard, I could become a fragrance millionaire but money doesn't motivate me. 🤷🏻‍♀️🐕

Yup! It’s a “Noodle” soap!

Last week I was so annoyed. I always think that I could reduce my work by just paying someone with basic competency to make some items for me. I’m happy to pay. But the problem in India is multifold. Labour is cheap, craft done by labourers is considered cheap, and the upper-middle class house wife aunties who make candles and soap produce cheap craft. Generally, peoples’ taste is gaudy and cheap.

This is how I started making soap. No one could make me my desired block of soap— simple, elegant, refined, with good perfume materials. No. Everyone has the same moulds, same yucky and cheap fruity, rose sherbety fragrance oils, and disgustawful plastic packaging. I had to quickly learn on the fly. The same has now happened with candles.

For the last six years, people have begged me to make candles and I kept refusing. I didn’t want to invest my time and materials, and I thought there were too many fickle issues. The wick has to be the right width, it has to be centred properly, the scent has to have a tenacious projection, then it has to burn consistently; if I pour the wax at the wrong temperature, cracks can appear; the weight and fragility of the glass or ceramic adds volume and cost driving up my shipping expenses. No, thank you. There are many candle-aunties/ soap-aunties doing their thing.

However, last week, my friend Divrina, author of The Perfume Project, went to Grasse, to learn the chemistry behind candle and soap making. I felt like I was missing out. Coincidentally, a woman in my building revealed herself to be a candle-aunty so I asked her to make very simple beeswax votive candles for me. I would supply her the Himalayan cedarwood and the wild beeswax so I would have some control over the end result. Her work was typical of what the middle class, upper caste Diwali-Gift-market demands — soy candles stuffed with star anise, coffee beans, cinnamon sticks, rose petals, gold leaf and silver leaf. (Also Divrina’s recently published book gives an excellent documentation of the processes of distillation and lends a critical account of the somewhat lacklustre fragrance industry of India. Do buy the book, it’s worth it).

Everything is froufrou!

I have hated receiving candles as gifts because the synthetic and often very cheap aroma chemicals used in them, cause me headaches. It’s as if all my senses are being assaulted at once. I figured that there must be people like me out there who enjoy soap and candles but wish for something clean and minimal in appearance, yet, are luxurious in fragrance and touch/feel/ smell sensation. This is what is missing even in the niche luxury sector.

Well, candle-aunty dropped me a message after two days to tell me she did “not understand my purpose in making simple candles”. She suggested the use of her funky cheaptastic moulds. She asked whether I have packaging boxes ready to go, and if she should make me scented wax sachets for wardrobes.

I. Was. SO. Angry!

I have wasted my time. Now, as usual, I have to do it myself. I spent two hours watching several videos of traditional candle makers in Japan, because they are the best. I realised that I have been going about this the wrong way. I did not need any mould, I could just hand dip the wick. It would be a slow and time consuming process, but I don’t mind. Slow processes that work towards the goal of a beautiful, organic, imperfect object is luxury! This method - in perfumery, or soap, or candle-making, does not allow me to scale up. Micro-niche is the way my practice remains and I like it.

Someone on social media tried being helpful by asking me to look up Rajiv Surendran’s candle making video. Who is Rajiv? Oh God, it’s Kenny! Kenny G, Kevin Gnapoor, the G is silent, Kenny from Mean Girls movie! Ugh!

It seems he makes full time thirst trap content. It’s all “nice” but empty, thoroughly uncritical. There is no interrogation around the craft-practice itself, because he’s just a suburban himbo-Martha Stewart!

No, what really got me going was one video on artist Alysia Mazzella. Please support her work if you can, it’s gorgeous!

Kenny can fuck off!

What was I saying?! Right, so I spent alot of time trawling the internet for local suppliers of candle moulds that I found one for noodles!! I ordered it, to use for soap. Then I made the noodle-smell in two minutes. Ha! Ha! just like actual instant noodles! Extracts of cumin, turmeric, celery seed, curry leaf, star anise, tulsi-basil, nutmeg, ginger, coriander, black pepper, lemongrass and just one drop of cassia made up the pleasant fragrance that matured into an elegant savoury blend.

BTW, this is how I discovered that such spice accords infuse magic in floral formulations of rose, jasmine, and tuberose, and they significantly elevate woody accords of Patchouli. Think old-man-aftershave like Old Spice from the 1970s and 80s but POSH!

As for the candles, I made a pure and natural Cedarwood beeswax candle. I burned it and my house smelled like a 16th century temple in Kyoto. Candle aunties could never!

I was so encouraged by the result that I went and did a supply run in the pollu-shun yesterday to get more materials like wax and good quality synthetic oils so I could make a set of softly scented “Toffee” candles, and a batch of Noodles soap.

I wrapped each pair of candles with the same paper I use for all my bon-bon style packaging. It’s simple, it doesn’t cost much and it’s still so beautiful. This first set of Cedarwood sold out, so I got going on the Toffee. Once that micro batch is done, I will make candle versions of my perfumes “Rosewater” and “Wearable Anger”.

Unfortunately, like incense, these flammable flammies cannot be posted outside India. But!! Fahad in London and I are trying to figure out a way because shipping from the UK to US is much cheaper than me shipping via FedEx from India. He’s an old friend turned stockist. Last week I posted him four fragrances in 3ml bottles that he will keep for sale: Rose Water, Exported Mangoes, Sandalwood Forest, and our favourite, Wearable Anger. I also sent most of these samples to London based Biophysicist Luca Turin last week to review. I will keep shipping Fahad a parcel often, so if you’re in the UK, the EU or the US, and would like to purchase a perfume, please hit reply.

I haven’t updated my website with either the soap or the candles, it’s all pretty spontaneous so just reply to this email with any questions :)

If you’re flying Malaysia Airlines this month, please look up the inflight magazine, there is a lovely article written on my practice by the amazing journalist Vidya Balachander. The magazine can be accessed online with one of those page-turning interfaces. Photos were lavishly taken by Pankaj Anand who came from Bombay. I was baby-sitting Koki, the puppy, who was very well behaved that day. But she’s always such a good girl!

LITRAHB PERFUMERY

Ah! One last thing. My co-curator on Bagh-e Hind, Nicolas Roth, gave a nice long nerdy lecture on the historical significance of roses and jasmines recently to the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, “History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes” series. They uploaded it online and I was feeling rather proud that the video has one “Like” and that’s from me, hahaha! But interested readers can view the lecture and then peruse his work on the Mughal landscape in each of the five chapters of Bagh e Hind, in particular the Rose chapter.

Watch it here

Long ago, I had given a virtual curatorial tour of Bagh-e Hind to Catherine Liu, author of Virtue Hoarders. As we came towards the end of our leisurely conversations on smell-references, she described a memory — the smell of a hotel room in China in the late 1980s, smoke trapped in furnishing and thick wool carpets…

Last week, I suddenly remembered this description and emailed Catherine for more details. She elaborated:

“If you have any really dusty Chinese wool carpets around, try sniffing them: it is a combination of dust, smoke and wool. These carpets have a thick pile and I don't think they were vacuumed, only beaten by hand in the yard and because they weighed so much, it was hard to get all the dust out.

“Soviet Era Chinese Hotel Room” — the smoke is of course cigarette smoke, but Beijing was also burning coal for heat, so that mixed with cigarette smoke. There was also the scent of Green tea (Long jing or Dragon’s Well).”

PS: Catherine has written about this time period in her novel “Oriental Girls Desire Romance”, published in 1997.

I had been to Beijing and Shanghai in September 2008 as part of my study group tour with Sotheby’s Institute but by then, China had cleaned up its air in preparation for the Olympics. So my reference point for the cigarette smoke filled environment was the Addis Ababa airport lounge. Through the 1980s, we used to travel with Ethiopian Airlines from Lagos to Bombay and back. Remembering that smell can still induce a headache but as I child I paid more attention to how beautiful Addis Ababa was, so different from Nigeria, with an actual winter season and so many different flowers!

I’ll remind readers for context that I am a self taught perfumer with no interest in math and chemistry. When I pivoted from writing about art to making perfume in 2018, I did not have the luxury (money! I mean money), to take a course in France. Instead I leveraged my two very-expensive-no-good art degrees to establish the same principles for this intangible aesthetic construction. The medium is different but the foundations stand on the same mode of inquiry: What is the artist saying, how are they saying it, and why?

I told Catherine I could make this perfume in five minutes, no big deal. To me, perfumery is not complicated or difficult or time consuming. If the small number of natural materials at my disposal are reliably good, then the result is always excellent. Plenty can be done with little and this is my specialty! I consider Perfumery as not abstract, but a highly logical field. I don’t fuss or second guess myself, the first draft of formulation is usually the final that still leaves room for a few tweaks. My aim is not to seek perfection, rather my purpose is to capture an approximate sense.

I certainly wanted to avoid the stuffy Babushka vibe and go for maximal textured opulence. My first job after I got my degree in art from Central St. Martins in London in 2002, was as a carpet designer for the largest manufacturer in West Africa in Lagos. I can tell you, carpets these days are neither made of wool, nor are they high-pile and plush. They’re made from a plastic polymer — they melt like plastic too so these products were marketed to consumers as “Flame Retardant Carpets and Rugs”. The CEO of this conglomerate of companies, an upper caste Brahmin Tamil from America, the most max-horrible-obnoxious type of “American” from New Jersey, waxed lyrical about his slick marketing tactics, while simultaneously bragging to his sycophants about recently purchasing a $5000 silk-wool rug from Kashmir. I want to emphasise here, that the elites will always shortchange you. You, the public, you don’t need fine things in life. You don’t deserve it. You don’t even have the education to be discerning of luxury.

This is a subject-feeling Catherine’s book helped me untangle early in 2023. Before I read Virtue Hoarders, I think I spent the whole of 2022 crying. I was so angry and confused. Now I’m angry and wise. We are being robbed blind on every front by crypto-corporate-fascists — the quality of air, water, the erasure of gardens and the future of flowers… These people will lay their Kashmiri rugs in a nuclear bunker in New Zealand. Once their food and water runs out, they will emerge to the surface. And we, the nuclear survivor-mutants, will see them as plump enough to eat!

Wait! What was I saying?! —So the carpets Catherine described were “thick and plush wool”, hence the perfume ought to reflect this luxuriousness. This sensation can only be created by the best natural materials, while their shine, can be amplified by quality synthetics.

For the effect of furnishing textiles, wool and carpet there is Cashmeran and Galaxolide, synthetic Civet and Castoreum musks, as well as some botanical musks like Himalayan Ambrette seed oil.

For the effect of dust and cigarettes, Costus extract, Haitian Vetiver and Tobacco Absolute.

For leather and woods, Suederal (manufactured by IFF), Ambergris, Agarwood, Buddhawood and Cedarwood.

For burning coal, Choya Nakh, a black tar-like resin produced by the distillation of seashells in Kannauj (India). It smells like…gasoline with a hint of iodine. I am not even sure how or why this has came to be produced over the last couple of centuries.

A glimpse of the materials:

Pictured is a tester strip dipped in undiluted Tobacco Absolute/Nicotiana Tabacum (Bulgaria). It smells like dried dates and raisins, so this is what I will use to make a “dried fig and fungi” accord for another perfume. A material on my wish list is Tobacco flower absolute, but even at 5 grams, it is too expensive.

I have green tea and black tea CO2 extracts, but I exercised some restraint and only used the green tea to keep things simple yet elegant.

As readers can see, the two vetivers, from India and Haiti are different in appearance. The one produced in India is green because the oil is traditionally distilled and stored in copper vessels. The same oil when shifted to an aluminium bottle will turn brown over time.

Perhaps due to differences in soil and climate, the Haitian vetiver smells marine-salty and smokey. In contrast, the Indian variety always smells wet-earth-sweet and like ground nuts.

The “Soviet Smoke” perfume came along fine but when I looked up Dragon’s Well tea, there was a question of authentic and inauthentic “Longjing tea”. Authentically roasted Longjing tea, according to Wikipedia (sorry!), tastes sweet, mellow and rounded. “Some varieties are distinctly vegetal and grassy, and others carry a hint of roasted chestnut and butter.”

Violet leaf and Green tea extracts were the crucial base to build on. Pictured above is a tester strip dipped in undiluted Violet Leaf Absolute. It smells like crushed cucumber peels with accentuated watery notes. Clary Sage Absolute, another green element and petitgrain oil, added a grassy-herbal-citrus note. The roasted-chestnut-butter note came from Orris. Lastly, one drop of Jasmine Grandiflorum, supplanted by Oakmoss and Cis Jasmone musk truly made this blend worthy of an Emperor.

This tea-accord turned out so sparklingly beautiful, I decided it ought to be experienced separately, and appreciated on its own. Catherine could also have some control over the two facets — she could choose to either expand the thick dark clouds of burning smoke or brighten up her “hotel room” with a refreshing “cup” of Longjing cha!

The final perfumes were paired with a special blend of Monsoon Malabar Coffee that my boutique trader recommended as it produces the “closest sensation to a smoked cigar”. I put this label in my FedEx parcel for Catherine but I got scolded by my freight forwarder: “MADAM, DON’T PUT TITLES THAT ARE PROHIBITED BY THE USA”!

I’m happy to say that the perfumes more than met Catherine’s memory and expectations and she has kindly given me permission to offer up the leftover perfume in my stock for sale. This perfume is not listed on my website because I made such a small quantity but Subscribers can acquire the set of two 3ml perfumes (tea & smoke) and coffee for $210, that includes FedEx. I regret that I have to put a decoy label on the coffee to satisfy my shipper’s stringent requirements.

Hit reply to order this synesthesia set and a paypal link will be sent to you.

You too can book a virtual curatorial tour with me and bring a guest! Last weekend I updated and revived my Bagh Gift Shop that has been dead since 2022!

Exit via Giftshop

On one of my evening strolls this past June, I noticed that the epi…epy… ugh! brahmakamal cacti that my neighbour aunty and I planted in our building five years back, had multiple buds ready to bloom that night itself!

The scent of this flower is so elusive, I returned to the plant prepared with my notebook to jot down the facets of floral fragrance. But 8 PM was early. 9 PM, still too early. Around 9:30, I went downstairs again to check and I could barely believe my eyes!!!

I struggle with smell references especially for flowers because I come from a concrete environment through and through. Growing up in Lagos in the 1980s and early 90s was not for the faint hearted. I struggle to maintain my cool when someone from the Global North tells me about their “traumas”. And because competing for misery is not my thing, I keep my mouth shut about my childhood spent with no electricity, water supply, hearing my parents discuss whether to stock food only for two weeks in case there is a military coup and the Indian embassy should airlift us out at a moments notice. I remember very well, my parents’ relatives arriving in Lagos, with only the clothes on their backs, still in shock, because they had to flee from Freetown, Liberia. They lost everything.

One day, there were protests and/or riots, and the school bus could not return us home. I collected my baby sister from kindergarten and went with a group of children to some aunty’s house near the Indian school to spend time till it was safe that night to arrange transport. The kindly, soft spoken aunty gave us saltless daal and rice to eat for lunch. When I got home, I mentioned to my dad their name/surname and he said, Oh they’re Parsis, they eat less salt. I asked “what are Parsis”.

My childhood, teenhood, adulthood, is filled with the smell of petrol. Every night my dad would lift the heavy jerrican to pour into the generator so we could atleast have a few lights on for dinner, and a fan running in each room to relieve us from an oppressive tropical heat and humidity, and maybe, if I was allowed, a video cassette movie! And the loud noise of the damned generator as I did homework!

While, this was a common experience for every household, for me, this slowwww stretchhh of tiiime was a period of non-stop severe scoldings because I was a hopeless student. I kept failing at maths. I could never finish my homework. Every day felt heavy. Why couldn’t life just end! I purposely remained quiet and invisible, hiding myself away in the art room. It was a good day if the teachers and my mom didn’t notice me. Brrr! Maths! (Early this year, it came as a relief to be diagnosed as a high functioning autistic. As a child and young adult I suffered terribly from daily hayfever and normally lived with an “empty brain” feeling, sleepwalking through life).

OMG! MAYBE I DO HAVE TRAUMA!!!!!

What was I saying?! Oh ya, so I don’t know the smell of flowers. When I came to India in 1996 to study in a girls boarding school in Mussoorie, my Indian classmates asked me what “Africa” was like, and I (dazed-brain) kept saying, I don’t know, there are buildings, no lions, no elephants. There was one other Indian girl from Malawi who declared she was more authentically “from Africa”. She spoke with a British accent, and infact was a British citizen having only spent an early part of her childhood there. I could not prove any exoticism so I remained spurned and empty-brained, invisible, quiet, and once more, found the art room to hide and surprisingly excel in. Secretly, I realised that people in India actually enjoyed a much higher standard of living than the Indian community abroad in Nigeria. Life was a struggle all round. While in India, I had never encountered a bunch of such spoiled rich no-etiquette-no-manners-girl-jerks in my entire life. Till today, I struggle with this cultural attitude of Indians at home and abroad. They treat everyone as if they are their personal servants to step on. Unfortunately, I have met this shining entitlement-trait in Indian academics as well. If this variety of snakes perceive you to have neither power nor position, they will steal your work, and climb on your back to improve their career. And to such Indians I say, “you fucked with the wrong bitch, I’m a Sindhi from Lagos! We have no fear!”

You know what!!! This exact thing happened to me on my MA program in Sothebys in Singapore in 2008. Just me and another lady were the only Indians on the course, but this sweet woman was British, she spoke eloquently with that accent, she was pleasant and polished— again, I was spurned. I did not (know how to) make friends until 2011. I am unlikeable, undiplomatic, un-tactful and these days, as I am properly in my 40s, I am insufferable also. Pfft.

And! Should you meet a Nigerian person, you ought to express appreciation for their resilience, courage, no-nonsense-soft-life approach and fine fashion sense. Show some respect!

Wait, what was I saying! These suppressed memories are coming back. I don’t like it. OK, so what I wanted to say was — how incredibly beautiful my life has turned out, what a privilege for a written-off-early-in-life-allergy-girl to be surrounded by beautiful smells of flowers, if not the flowers themselves. I knew exactly how to construct the scent of the epi…phy..llum bloom! Over many months since June, I have patiently collected all the crucial perfumery extracts and aroma molecules through various suppliers. now I have violet leaf absolute (France), Sakura salicylate manufactured by Takasago, Green tea CO2 from my favourite manufacturer in Satara, two hours away from me, some transparent jasmine musk, meaning the musk acts like a loudspeaker for jasmine-green tea notes without at all interfering with the perfume itself, some Petitgrain (France), and Clary sage absolute (France). And maybe, I don’t know if it was rain-pollution in the air, but I sniffed a faint note of fennel! I brought a bloom home just to keep sniffing it to remember the smell. I think I remember it.

This perfume will be ready in a week, hit reply if you wish to order it.

Litrahb Perfumery

This is last minute but if you can make it, please come to our zoom conversation today with myself and artists curated within Fatma Shah’s exhibition “Tomorrow isn’t promised” at 11 Temple Rd, Lahore.

Topic: Meet The Artists of Tomorrow Isn't Promised a collateral event LBF
Time: Oct 30, 2024 05:00 PM Islamabad, Karachi, Tashkent

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/74413208498?pwd=zAJqriTQNalrooqzI4jpnoHKsn0Otb.1

Meeting ID: 744 1320 8498
Passcode: uEvw3D

I will talk about my practice as a critic, perfumer and artist. I will also show you all the pop-ups I painted last year expressly to steal the art out of the institution to in order to circumvent their profit-source of copyright-fees and muddle their idea of authenticity and sense of control.

These playful mini-paintings of Mughal and Rajput banana trees, rose bushes and kewra clusters emerged from a bizarre email threat from the Smithsonian regarding my copyright violations of their 18th century paintings. I’ve already discussed this in a previous newsletter*, but I want to emphasise how much this incident exposed how museums and their academic fellows rush to impose gatekeeping.

*More here:

When I was mapping out Bagh-e Hind in 2021, I was told by a junior academic that I should “not be profiting from this”. This being accessing my own history and heritage and making a living as an artist. I have been told the same in other ways since.

Puritan brahmin-scholars who don’t question their own sources of funding have told me how problematic my “Gift shop” is, or that it is tricky for them to ally with me because I “turn knowledge into products”. So, if perfumery and soap were not going to be accepted as legitimate mediums of art - in an age where these very people will argue that art can be anything - I was going to beat them at their own game by painting.

Good thing I did, because when I had a virtual meeting with an American museum curator last year, the first thing she asked rather bluntly was “do you run a business?! is [Bagh-e Hind] a business?!”

I happily responded by holding up my little Rajput tree pop-ups and said, “Look, I paint, look at my Art”. HA! HA! HA!

Such episodes have pushed me to think more seriously about the fact that the only position I authentically hold as a critic, is one of the outsider-antagonist. Hence, my appearance as a “monster” in this polite society garden. More below:

After 2022, I consciously divested from museums and art-world systems by refusing to apply for residencies, grants, fellowships, biennales, symposium panels, or draft exhibition proposal/applications. Business it is. If anyone wants to work with me, they can come find me on my terms.

This ran longer than I thought it would but come see me today over zoom if you can. it will be a free-flowing cross-border conversation with me in India and other artists from Pakistan!

PS: If there is a recording, I will update this newsletter with the link here.

Litrahb Perfumery

Bagh-e Hind

Continuing on from my previous newsletter “Bagh in Lahore”* here are some photos of the exhibition as promised! But I did more! I finally got over my year long laziness and updated all the information of our exhibition history on baghehind.com/baghIRL (Bagh in real life). Nicolas and I also worked on a small scent-translation project for the Rietberg’s Ragamala exhibition in Zurich which is on view at the moment, so once I have photos that illustrate how our scents are displayed alongside18th century Rajput paintings, I will update that on this web-page as well with a comprehensive summary of our methodology. Until then, you can read a snippet about our exploration for the Rietberg here: “Wet Fur, mud, lightning (perfume)”

*Bagh in Lahore has a number of helpful web-links listed for all the new subscribers who have kindly joined recently.

On 12th october 2024, curator Fatma Shah conducted a conversation with us over Instagram Live. There was some internet-issue but we squeezed in as much substance as we could before our feed cut off. If you have some patience, you can watch the first part that got recorded here on the gallery’s official page, by clicking on the image above.

Nicolas and I have given so many (virtual) talks together since 2021 and still there are breathtaking surprises from my colleague-gardener! Fatma invited me to speak first so as I laid the groundwork on how Bagh-e Hind emerged as a concept. I mentioned the key image of a saffron crocus flower in the border of a manuscript that caught my eye and hooked me into this sensorial world. In the above recording, viewers can see Nicolas getting up on cue to bring his freshly cut saffron crocus flowers that he grew in his garden that he holds up towards the screen to show everyone! It is such surprising moments that fill me with an overwhelming sense of sweetness! I think about the sheer luck of accidentally bumping into his work via Twitter in 2020 and figuring out quickly that he would make a perfect collaborator for a subversive digital garden project that decentralises knowledge production, away from rigid institutions and their unforgiving gatekeepers.

Rest of the Photos

As for updates on my perfumery work, once more, procrastination was set aside to complete a bespoke project for a really wonderful client. I made her a “Smoked Sandalwood” accord and stitched a rather fanciful, jazzy, Tina-Turner-gold fringe-dressy brocade silk pouch! (And shipped it off with some Smoked Sandalwood coffee!).

The accord was constructed with agarwood (oudh), smoke, petrichor, algae and doused in Mysore sandalwood oil. It sat for four months and matured quite nicely.

I love hearing back from readers, especially about their scent memories, smell-associations and wildest imaginable combinations, so do hit reply if you please!

Litrahb Perfumery

Our Smoke chapter from Bagh-e Hind opened in Lahore yesterday evening as part of the exhibition “Tomorrow isn’t promised”, curated by Fatma Shah. From the virtual to the real, our friend Fatma pulled out all the stops to recreate our sensorial vision for visitors! Many phuljari were tested so audiences could come and light the best sparklers on the opening night; bunches upon bunches of tuberoses were bought early morning at the flower market to be placed in the show— by the time they bloomed in the evening, a floral boom welcomed visitors! Several flower pots were also set in place and a sumptuous nastaliq font chosen for the exhibition title and Urdu poetry, left Nicolas and myself swooning! Hopefully I will have some nice photos to share within the week.

For the many new subscribers who have so kindly signed up for my fun, complainy, perfumey newsletter, “Bagh-e Hind: Scent translations of Mughal and Rajput Garden Paintings” is an independent open access digital project curated by Nicolas Roth, a horticulturist and scholar of Early Modern South Asia, (Cambridge, USA) and myself, an art critic and perfumer (Pune, India). We launched this olfactory and botanical map of the Mughal landscape on 10th September 2021. We found ourselves very much ahead of the curve where scholarship and art criticism were concerned. As far as I know, ours is the only cross-disciplinary collaboration to exist and we have since observed more academics pivot to explore the history of flowers and fragrance.

I’ve listed a few helpful links:

-Here is our bio: https://www.baghehind.com/curators

-We have had a physical exhibition at the Institute of Art & Olfaction in Los Angeles, in 2022: https://www.baghehind.com/baghirl

-We independently curated, designed and funded this exhibition: We commission various scholars to produce original essays on the sensorial history of Mughal India for our online exhibition catalogue: https://www.baghehind.com/catalogue

-We have given several interviews and co-authored essays: https://www.baghehind.com/news

-You can view our Opening Night Zoom event we held on 10/Sept/21 on Vimeo. We had some wonderful speakers.

Personally, Bagh emerged from a very clear vision I had for translating garden paintings to scent and flavour as a means of access by 2018, but it also appeared from a mountain range of loathing for colonially-entrenched academia/museum-institutions that keep this knowledge circling the drain of conferences. We firmly believe that scholarship should be produced for the public good and should be made accessible through creative formats.

Nicolas and I have figured out numerous ways to pull out different chapters from our digital garden so that we never have to wait for any institution to offer us an opportunity. In December 2023, for example, our Narcissus chapter was exhibited in Kallol Dutta's curation of the Queer Arts Festival in Kolkata. The way things come to fruition, however, depends on our thoughtful collaborators who make our Garden possible!

On 12th October, Nicolas and I will be presenting (via the interwebs). You can join via Instagram Live.

On View: October 3 - November 7, 2024
Time: 11.00AM – 7.00PM daily
Venue: 11 Temple Road, Mozang, Lahore (Near Regal Cinema)

Curators Talk: Join us at the venue in Lahore or via instagram Live @11 Temple Road where Nicolas and I will be presenting virtually.

The Smoke chapter illustrates most clearly of all the sections of Bagh-e Hind the way motifs and tropes were translated across different contexts, adapted to different styles, and used to represent different events and figures, from Shab-i Barat to Diwali and from Muslim courtiers to Hindu deities. In addition, its verses underscore the way in which the floral and pyrotechnic were linked in early modern South Asian thought, not only by way of poetic comparisons between sparks and flower buds but through a terminology of fireworks that describes sparklers as "flower showers" and "hand flowers".

- Nicolas Roth

I have reformulated a small batch of the original “Smoke” perfume translation that I made in 2021, so that audiences can acquire the scent of a 17th century garden on the night of celebration. It’s the smell of agarwood and sandalwood chips burning slowly over charcoal, night blooming jasmines and tuberoses, wet earth, and the shimmering fizz of firecrackers (and gun powder).

Please hit reply to order: 6ml/ USD 75 or INR 5000; International Fedex: $75

Litrahb Perfumery

After complaining about my stuck-ness in my previous newsie “Luxury Laundry Powder” and finding such delight in the results of my own detergent formulation, I decided to make two more editions — one for my friend Lily as a housewarming gift (her four year old twin boys will enjoy this very much!) and one for birthday boy, Nicolas.

Last year, I was so inspired by the swirliness of clouds painted in one 18th century Rajput painting that was on display in an exhibition at the Smithsonian. I carved little clouds — dark to light, just as in the painting — from slabs of soap, painstakingly painted each cloud with some soap dye, and then set them into layers to illustrate the night sky giving way to day break (pictured above).

Ofcourse, that creative exploration came to a halt as the Smithsonian’s Public Relations arm sent me an email that included an accusation and a threat. I had apparently violated their copyrights, if I did not stop being inspired by art in their exhibition, they would report my Instagram account, effectively shutting down a source of my livelihood.

I’ve already written about this curious case so let me show you some cute clouds I had leftover in my cupboard since then. I also wanted to revisit this stunning 18th century landscape to show you a section depicting the common-folk of Rajasthan going about their morning ablutions at dawn by the lake, bathing, praying, or doing their laundry. Some clothes are shown hanging on trees to dry, one garment in particular is precariously billowing in the wind!

*If Karen from the Smithsonian wants to threaten me again, she knows where to find me, but nothing stops me from sharing details of this spectacular painting from the collection of the City Palace Museum, Udaipur, as these historical artworks are meant for the public eye. If I am not mistaken, this painting was restored and shown for the first time in Washington D.C. in 2022-23 for an American audience. I have my doubts on whether this is on display at the Museum in India itself, unless someone can correct me. It’s probably gone into storage never to be seen again.

It seems there wasn’t a complete photo of the painting among my files, so I have tried to piece it together by joining various image-details. “Sunrise in Udaipur”, this watercolour painting on paper is dated 1722-1723. Its dimensions are impressive; framed, it spans a little over a metre.

Look at the pair of pyjamas laid out to dry on the rocks; I think the long red strip must be turban fabric. Additional yards of cloth lie next to it, one is flung over the branch of the banyan tree. And my favourite sensorial cue prompts the viewer to imagine a gust of a cool morning breeze - the billowing kurta clinging on to the banyan tree branch! I want to reach out and catch it before it flies away!!! You know that smell of clean cotton-linen? I can recreate it with some linalool, galaxolide and alpha irone.

Here, we definitely have a dhoby ghat where bundles of garments are being washed wholesale and dried over the hillside. We can see a pair of pyjamas, four kurtas and some red fabric laid out. Now, these fellows would appreciate my laundry powder for sure!

I prepared several colour-block soaps — pink, green, orange, yellow, blue — so that I get a funfetti version of detergent powder upon grating them fine enough to resemble rainbow cake sprinkles! And that sparked the idea for scenting the powder with a birthday cake fragrance! I added crystals of Ethyl Vanillin, Maltol and Coumarine to reinforce notes of cherry pie, butter cream, white chocolate, and milkbar-sensations!

Of all my inventions and innovations, I am most proud of this one! And what about the little 18th century kurta nearly flying off in the wind? — I caught it, it is in my hands:

Speaking of art history, flowers and scents, on Sunday, the MFA Boston revealed a selection of 18th and 19th century garden paintings and flower studies from their South Asia collection in a show titled “Flowers of Summer and Fall”. As an extension of his own research (and co-curation of Bagh-e Hind), Nicolas developed the curatorial information on each painting by identifying and categorising each plant, flower, their geographic origins, locations across North India, and the climate and season they would have thrived in, as well as their social and cultural significance. Our other collaborations across Lahore and Zurich will bloom later this year — more on that soon.

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