Epiphyllum (extrait de parfum)
Newsletter 10.2024
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.
