Kannauj is a sleepy Indian town that has managed to nurture a prized skill for generations.

Synopsis: The Straits Times' foreign editor Bhagyashree Garekar chats with ST’s correspondents in the Asia-Pacific, the US and Europe.

They talk about life as it goes on, amid the screaming headlines and bubbling crises. In this episode, she chats with ST's India correspondent Debarshi Dasgupta.

Perfume-making is an ancient tradition in Kannauj, a city by the Ganges river in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Kannauj’s perfume industry flourished for centuries under royal patronage, especially that of the Mughals, who ruled South Asia from the 16th to 19th century.

Cheap foreign perfumes and deodorants, with their heady mix of new fragrances, swamped India from the 1990s, edging out Kannauj’s attars. Now, a new Perfume Tourism initiative launched in March 2023, seeks to revive Kannauj’s lost glory and popularise its products among individual users, allowing tourists to take a deep personalised whiff of Kannauj’s ancient perfume-making tradition, from flower to bottle.

Highlights (click/tap above):

1:04 What’s so special about Kannauj?

2:40 Narrow lanes and expansive imagination

4:44 Can you make perfumes in your kitchen; what marks a good perfume 

9:05 What might a Singapore-inspired perfume smell like, if Mr Pranav Kapoor, an eighth-generation perfumer, were commissioned to make it?

12:22 What is ‘mitti attar’? 

14:11 Does traditional perfume making have a future? 

Read Debarshi Dasgupta’s article here: https://str.sg/iw5d

Produced by: Bhagyashree Garekar ([email protected]), Ernest Luis and Fa’izah Sani

Edited by: Fa’izah Sani

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