Former advertising professional Esha Tewari is reviving India’s dying attar industry

The venture to revive the perfume industry has also given a new lease of life to the traditional perfumers in places like Kannauj and Hyderabad
Esha Tewari
Esha Tewari

The story of the musk deer, enchanted by its fragrance, roaming in search of its origin, unaware that the very element resides within itself, teaches us many lessons––to introspect, realise our potentials, and understand our purpose.

For Esha Tewari, former marketing and advertising professional, it took a pandemic to take a beat from the hustle culture which she admittedly loved––the constant being- the on-the-go, with her phone buzzing with messages, gave her a sense of purpose. However, the lockdowns offered her the time to walk down the memory lane and understand her true calling––to create something of her own.

Born in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, Tewari remembers seeing attars on the vanity table of her grandparents. As the pandemic offered her the luxury of time, the dormant recesses of her mind began to resurface, taking her back to those enigmatic scents and evoking memories of visiting Kannauj, the perfume capital of India, as a child. She was raised with the attar heritage, almost by default, by virtue of spending her childhood in the land of attars. The deeper she dived into these fragrant memories, the closer she felt to the idea of making them her own with a venture to revive the oldest and the purest form of perfumery in the world for the modern era.

“From Lucknow to Kannauj and Varanasi, the streets are filled with attar saaz (connoisseurs). My grandfather, being a huge fan of attars, used to bring home a variety of these bottled fragrances. My summers used to be perfumed with khas and Jasmine, and winters with more mixes of spices and Oudh,” Tewari recollects.

Growing up, she often used to go on trips to see the making of attars, which is no less than an art in itself. As she was researching to build on her rekindled passion, she discovered that India is not present on the contemporary global map of fragrances despite having a rich technology and heritage. That is because, she says, “Our aesthetic sensibilities have changed over time.” Attars have been labelled as too heavy and headache-inducing while global perfume brands have gained more acceptance.

“However, interestingly, India is the primary exporter of oudh and other natural materials used in perfumery, reminiscent of the story of the musk deer,” she says. Tewari wanted to be able to create a space where the traditional and the contemporary coexist in perfect harmony. And with her venture, she is blending the old craftsmanship with the new aesthetic demands. This has also helped, she says, change the course of the livelihoods of traditional perfumers in the country, thereby helping revive a dying industry.

She works with local artisanal perfumers of Hyderabad, Kannauj and now Uttarakhand. These places have generations working on the making of attars, but the newer generations were drifting off as people began shifting to perfumes. As a solution, Tewari held workshops with modern perfumers and traditional attar artisans to create modern attars which retain the heritage of attars while taking heed of the present-day scent sensibilities. She uses the subtle sandalwood as the base oil to lend a touch of modern sophistication.

Talking about the painstaking process of making an attar, the young entrepreneur says, “It teaches us about life, right from the timing of the flowers being harvested. There is a difference in the fragrance of flowers harvested at 4 am and 4.30 am.” Large copper pots (Degh) are placed onto a mud-brick platform set with fireplaces and connected to a series of cooling tanks by a long-necked copper receptacle (Bhapka) filled with sandalwood which is partially suspended in cold water. Degh and Bhapka are linked by hollow bamboo pipes. The different botanicals are added to the copper cauldron that would be filled with around 40 kg of water and heated. 

The concoction simmers and the fragrance-imbibed vapour travels through the bamboo into the Bhapka. After each stage, a new layer of complexity would be added to the sandalwood oil. The process takes about eight hours. Manufacturers say the traditional system has stood the tests of time. They do not rush the process as it can burn the ingredients. “Each moment has to be savoured; it is not necessary to be always busy to be successful,” Tewari says.

The venture to revive the perfume industry has also given a new lease of life to the traditional perfumers in places like Kannauj and Hyderabad by helping them change the course of their livelihoods

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