Freshly picked roses are used to make intoxicating plant spices called rose oil.
Author: Rachena M. Sachasin
Photo by TUUL AND BRUNO MORANDI
Translation: Xu Ting
Long before sunrise, Teg Singh came to his own flower bed on the banks of the Ganges. He circled the rose bushes, plucking the blooming flowers and throwing the pink petals into the sack he had draped over his shoulders. When the first rays of sunlight floated on the river, the 35-year-old Singer rode a motorcycle and transported his harvest to the perfume capital of India, the small town of Gennauj.
For more than 400 years, Genaucher has been using time-tested distillation methods to craft oil-based botanical perfumes called rose oil.
In the ancient Indian culture obsessed with perfumes, rose oil was highly sought after by the Mughal royal family and common people, and in recent years, rose oil has aroused the love of a new generation of enthusiasts for its refreshing aroma.
Unlike modern perfumes, which use alcohol as a carrier because alcohol is cheap, neutral, and easy to drift, traditional rose oil uses sandalwood oil as a substrate to make it more oily and easily absorbed. A drop of rose oil is dropped on the skin and the aroma can sometimes last for days. Rose oil gives off a strong smell of flowers, wood, musk, smoke or grass that attracts both men and women. During the colder season, rose oil with the scents of cloves, cardamom and saffron can bring warmth. During the warmer months, rose oil brings the cool aromas of jasmine, vetiver and marigold.
Gennauder produces this type of rose oil, as well as the mysterious mitti rose oil, which is reminiscent of the smell of the soil after the rain due to the use of roasted alluvial soil during the distillation process. Shamama is another fascinating invention, distilled from a blend of more than 40 species of flowers, herbs and resins, which takes days to make and then several months of aging. Some perfume companies in Europe use these rose oils, such as rose, vetiver and jasmine rose oil, as one of the raw materials, which is a striking ingredient in the composition of modern perfumes.
In the narrow alleys of the Barra Bazaar, Gennauge's main market, shops are filled with glass bottles of rose oil and "ruh", or essential oils, one incense after another. The men sat cross-legged on the mat, sniffing small bottles and wiping them behind their ears with extra-long cotton swabs soaked in perfume. Controlling this ancient commercial activity are rose oil "sazh", or perfumers, who attract guests with great skills like alchemy.
"The best perfumers in the world walk through these narrow alleys, they walk through mud and cow dung just to get Gennaudje's rose oil. There's really nothing better than it. "Pranjar Kapoor said he was M. L. The fifth-generation partner of Ramnallain Perfume, one of the companies here that still uses traditional distillation methods.
Tiger Singer arrived, and he unloaded his own roses in The Kappl's stack, an open-air courtyard that was used as a distillation site. Kapoor's rose oil master Craftsman, Ram Singh scooped the petals into a copper still and poured water on top. Before tightening the lid, Ram Singh wrapped the edges of the container in a mixture of clay and cotton that hardened and sealed perfectly. When the flowers are boiled, the steam passes through a bamboo pipe and enters a copper pot filled with sandalwood oil, which immediately absorbs the saturated rose steam.
In the five or six hours that Teg Singh's roses turned into rose oil, Ram Singh walked back and forth between the stills and the pot, measuring the water temperature, listening to the "hissing" sound of steam, and intuitively judging whether firewood needed to be added to the fire. "I've been doing this since I was a kid." Ram Singh, 50, said.
In order to achieve the desired quality, the process is repeated the next day with a new batch of rose petals. Once it's made, it's aged for months in a bottle made of camel skin that sucks up the moisture from the rose oil. Rose oil products are comparable to liquid gold, and a kilogram can sell for $3,000.
Today, most of Genau's outstanding rose oil is sold to Muslim communities in the Middle East and India. Delhi's Moonlight Bazaar was built in the 17th century by Mughal King Shah Jahan, and opened in this market is a historic shop that now sells rose oil and modern perfumes. The shop is almost always crowded with Muslim men looking for rose oil, who are in a hurry to scent themselves before Friday prayers and festivals like Eid al-Fitr. But the local market is not enough to sustain gennaudger's distilleries, many of which have been forced to close or switch to imitations of Western perfumes.
Still, Kapoor was optimistic. He spends a lot of time lobbying the world's top perfume companies, promoting to them the traditions of rose oil and the qualities of Genauje plant essential oils. "Westerners' tastes are shifting to Oriental scents," he says, "usually, they prefer light citrus flavors, but nowadays you'll find that big-name perfumers like Dior and Hermès, and of course, middle Eastern perfume companies, are looking for rich scents like rose and shamama." ”
Perhaps the most prominent global spokesperson for rose oil is Jaenvi Lahota Nandan, who was born in the perfume-loving Indian city of Lucknow, trained in Europe for seven years to become a perfume master, and then founded perfume libraries in Goa, India, and Paris, France.
Nandan's distillation process of incense is like poetry, a quirk, and a science. Every year she creates a new scent or two, and rose oil is an important part of her perfume.
"Rose oil goes straight to the soul. In a small space, all the flames and smoke are like the end of the world, but they are also real and beautiful," she said, "and you can't reproduce it all in a laboratory in Europe." ”