Kannauj, a small town located in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh in India, has a rich history of producing high-quality fragrances using natural ingredients. The town has been involved in the perfume industry for centuries and has become known as the perfume capital of India, attracting visitors from around the world who are interested in fragrances.

‘Traditional perfumery in India predates the written language’...reads the text in a YouTube documentary made by two UC Berkley students Ciella Sfirri and Christopher Ehermann. The video, made on the decline of Kannauj's perfumes and traditional perfumery, is truthful and poignant. Yet this wasn’t the first time I heard of poor fragrance practices, in what is considered to be the perfume capital of India. For almost a decade now beauty insiders have been in the know about the contamination of plant essences that come from this city. This decline seems even more unfortunate if you trace the history of perfume making in our country. Perfumery was a skill popular all across northern India, which has now shrunk to just the city of Kannauj where it deteriorates rapidly.

One of the key reasons for Kannauj's success in the perfume industry is its abundant supply of natural ingredients, such as sandalwood, rose, jasmine, and musk. These ingredients are carefully selected and harvested by farmers in the surrounding areas, who have inherited their knowledge and techniques from previous generations.

Kannauj is known for its traditional methods of producing perfumes, which involve the distillation and extraction of natural oils from the selected ingredients. This process requires skilled workers who have years of experience and training in the art of natural perfumery.

However, despite its rich history and reputation, the perfume industry in Kannauj is facing a significant challenge: the dying art of natural perfumery. With the rise of synthetic fragrances and the declining interest in traditional perfumes, the demand for natural perfumes has decreased significantly over the years.

“Not many know that Kannauj wasn’t just one city but the entire North India, which was called the kingdom of Kannauj under King Harshvardhan around 600 CE,” says Dr Jyoti Marwah, founder, of Mussorie Fragrance and Flowers Institute. Even today we can see remnants of old-school fragrance-making still in fragrance factories of Jaunpur, Benaras, and Ghazipur that were earlier a part of this kingdom. “In fact, the first discovery of fragrance-making material – for distillation and storage - was in the Indus Valley Civilisation.” Marwah explains that initially aromatic waters were created to be part of the offering to god, subsequently worn as perfume. “Kannauj has been mentioned time and again in history – Huan Tsang has spoken about how perfumery was used all across North India and Ptolemy has specifically mentioned about aromatics in Kannauj.” So great was the city’s affiliation with attar-making that King Harvardhan under his rule called it Kusumpura - the city of flowers.

There is no doubt that fragrance has always been a big part of Indian culture, whether it's wearing attars, lighting incense sticks, perfuming our food with spices and essences, the tradition of paan, or adorning our hair with fragrant flowers. Our country is also blessed with plants such as sandalwood, jasmine, vetiver, rose, and spikenard that often form the base of perfumery. But we have failed to preserve both natural resources and skill, whether it's via a lack of policies or poor customer interest. Take the case of sandalwood, which is almost impossible to source. “Earlier there were a few distillers of sandalwood, when it used to come from Veerappan (Indian bandit also known as sandalwood Veerapan for his control of this resource), but after he was killed, there are barely any sources,” says Marwah.

The other natural resource that is rapidly dwindling is spikenard or jatamansi, a precious ingredient used in perfumery and also as a sedative in Ayurveda. We have lost about 60-70% of its reserves in the Upper Himalayas only because it hasn’t been preserved properly. As for Kannauj's perfumes, the last decade or so has seen a sharp fall in the quality of pure attars and essences, as the increased demand for synthetics has elbowed out traditional players.

This has had a major impact on the livelihoods of the people involved in the perfume industry in Kannauj, particularly the farmers and workers who rely on it for their income. Many farmers have switched to cultivating other crops or have abandoned their farms altogether, while the workers have been forced to find alternative employment.

Saad Siddiqui, who has a manufacturing business in Kannauj along with outlets in Mumbai has seen first the falling demand for pure essences firsthand. “We derive perfumes from flowers and essential oils – zero synthetics - but in the last 10 years the demand has increased for cheaper alternatives.” Naturally, this has given rise to contamination. “Take the case of nagarmotha oil, which we specialise in.” He explains that manufacturers mix 75% pure oil with 25% synthetics, which, for some reason, doesn’t show up in lab tests. “The synthetic form is 100-200 a kg as compared to 18,000 a kilo, so when 25% of essence is replaced with cheaper synthetic that causes a huge fall in price that I simply cannot compete with.”

Varun Tandon, whose family has been in the business of traditional perfume making for almost two centuries, launched (with his sister Krati Tandon) Boond, a perfumery that hopes to preserve and popularize the traditional craft of attar making. “Pre liberalization people still used a lot of pure attars because the competition was lesser. But today, not only does the attar maker have to compete with high-end fragrances but also a Rs 200 deodorant.” Additionally, he says that business owners only focused on the B2B aspect and didn’t upgrade to sell directly to the consumer. “It’s unfortunate that a lot of these people have learnt this skill from their forefathers, but they don’t want to teach it to their children.” In many families of traditional perfume makers, this is the last generation well-versed in this craft.

Though Kannauj is popular for all types of fragrant essences, they specialize in what is known as mitti attar, or the fragrance of wet earth after the rain. Bipin Mishra and his family, featured in the video, are some of the few artisanal houses that still use the traditional deg bhapka technique to extract fragrance. “My grandfather had an attar shop and in 1981 we started extracting fragrances with this distillation process.” To make mitti attar they buy ‘clay rotis’ from the local potter and use the same process of distillation. They light a fire under the degh (cauldron) and the steam from this cauldron lifts the fragrance/oil and takes it to the condenser to cool down. “The condenser has a paraffin base, which catches the fragrance of the mud,” says Mishra.

To address this issue, the government of India has taken several initiatives to promote and revive the dying art of natural perfumery in Kannauj. This includes the establishment of the Fragrance and Flavour Development Centre, which provides training and support to farmers and workers in the perfume industry, and the promotion of natural perfumes through various marketing initiatives.

Despite the challenges it faces, Kannauj remains committed to preserving the art of natural perfumery and maintaining its reputation as the perfume capital of India. Through its innovative techniques, high-quality natural ingredients, and skilled workforce, Kannauj continues to produce some of the world's finest fragrances and attract visitors who appreciate the artistry and beauty of natural perfumery.

There were bigger factories in Kannauj but Sfirri and Ehermann chose Mishra because it was more intimate. The fact that it was just a room below a computer training center is symbolic of how Kannauj is torn between two extremes – tradition and modernization, craft and technology. “Some might say that the industry is dying but we were surprised by the optimism of people we met, who didn’t think this industry was going away,” says Sfirri. Indeed, the industry isn’t going away but changing form. Today, gutka/pan masala flavoring forms the core of their business.

Fragrances are used in both cosmetics and food, therefore they are a part of our consumption on a daily basis. “The biggest advantage with synthetics is that they can be standardised easily, but they are made with ingredients such as phthalates that are known to be carcinogenic,” explains Marwah. For her, the solution lies in creating pressure groups to coerce policy change, “Just like pressure groups were created to ban single use plastics.” And though the road ahead requires new policies, we can begin as consumers to invest in natural fragrance extracts over an expensive designer fragrance, which sometimes costs as less as five cents to create. Because for us, this isn’t just a deterioration of quality or loss of livelihood but also a loss of craftsmanship and legacy. Can we preserve it by being customers? I believe that is a good place to begin.

References:

vogue.in