Indole-nt

One of the most remarkable things I learnt this week is about an organic compound called Indole.

The topic came up randomly on X through a Business Insider video titled, "Why is Jasmine Oil so Expensive?".  A firm in Tamil Nadu was being featured for being one of the largest exporters of Jasmine oil in the world. 

While it is interesting to know the kind of effort that goes into the extraction process (about 5000 hand-plucked jasmine buds in 1kg; and 1000kg of buds to extract 1kg of jasmine oil costing over $5000!), what struck me is a somewhat quirky fact - you get the amazing fragrance of Jasmine only when the oil is around 2% concentration. Once you exceed this concentration the same oil first smells like rotten leaves, and then like shit!

This is because of one key ingredient in Jasmine oil - Indole - which is found in faeces in higher concentrations. 

So the trick is to capture the fragrance at the right moment, which is soon after the Jasmine sambac flowers bloom, and then to blend and dilute it in such a way that you get perfumes such as Doir's J'Adore fragrance.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Business Insider - https://youtu.be/Rt16uOqImI0  

* M.Hainey - Perfume Design - https://www.mizubrand.com/blogs/news/the-story-of-indole-in-natural-perfumery-white-florals

The Sense of Smell

Remember this post about 'The Most Translated Books of the World'? 

Well, a few days ago, I decided to pick one of the few European books that I had not read in that collection - the most translated book from Germany -   Patrick Süskind's "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer', which apparently has been translated into no less than 49 languages.

It seemed to deal with an interesting topic - the sense of smell - which is perhaps the most evocative of our sense perceptions, and one that often triggers a flood of memories. There is a certain agarbatti fragrance that instantly takes me back to my wonder years in Hyderabad, a childhood filled with sunny days squinting at floating kites, of playing and wandering about without a care in the world; The smell of musty books takes me to my grandfather's library in Kerala, of hours spent flipping through books I had been explicitly banned from reading (was that a trick to get me interested in books?). A couple of years ago when I landed up for my first UN assignment in Afghanistan, I kept wondering why buildings at Green Village reminded me so much of Tsukuba University in Japan, until it struck me that they were using a floor cleaner with the exact same fragrance! 

This book tells us the story of an orphan named Grenouille who was born in the 1700s and promptly discarded  in an offal heap at a slaughterhouse in Paris. The child grows up to discover that he has an unusual talent, an obsession for smells and odours as well as the ability to recreate them.  He first starts earning his keep as an apprentice at a tannery, then wheedles into a becoming an assistant to a leading perfumer in Paris, before becoming a serial killer who ultimately never gets punished for his crimes.

As expected, the narrative serves dollops of gyan on the art of making perfumes, but then goes overboard over their power to influence human behaviour: 

"Odours have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions or will. The persuasive power of an odour cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fill us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it... for people could close their eyes to greatness, to horrors, to beauty, and their ears to melodies or deceiving sounds. But they cannot escape scent. For scent is the brother of breath...

"There are scents that linger for decades. A cupboard rubbed with musk, a piece of leather drenched with cinnamon oil, a glob of ambergris, a cedar chest - they all possess virtual eternal olfactory life. While other things like lime oil, bergamot, jonquil and tuberose extracts, and many floral scents -- evaporate within a few hours if they are exposed to the air in a pure, unbound form."

The book itself is fast-paced and describes Paris and France in a way that is not very different from Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables". In this storyline you travel from Paris southwards to the barren hills of Plomb du Cantal,  Montpellier, Grenoble and then to Grasse, north of Cannes.  

Yet, unlike Hugo's classic it descends into incredulous levels, like a pet peeve that has run amok, taking the story to a point where you just wonder - Why would anybody want to translate this book into so many languages? Is this really the most translatable book that German language has to offer? 

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REFERENCES

* Book - Süskind, Patrick (1985): "Perfume - The Story of a Murderer "

* The Smell of Evolution (NatGeo)

Chanel, by Chance

I was stalked this week - by a perfume.

An unusual smell that kept reminding me of a weekend shopping trip; it kept coming back time and again – while working at my desk, while driving to work, through meetings and during my lunchtime, until I got back home in the evening.

It took a while for me to realize that the culprit was a Parisian creator of olfactory promises – Chanel. On Saturday, during a visit to a local mall, I had loitered towards the perfume section while waiting for the shopping to finish. The whole floor looked radically different from my last visit; previous occupants of prime-space had been shoved to the periphery and the center was now occupied by a few eye-catching, black & white, dramatically lit Chanel counters.

I must have been immediately identified as a potential sucker – just as I was wondering why the famous No.5 bottles were displayed like crown jewels, a salesman sided up, “Looking for something special, sir?”

“Uh?”, I mumbled something about being just curious and was about to slink away when he quickly offered to show me around. The fellow looked sincere and affable, without a hint of superciliousness. He introduced himself as Al-tamash. Yes, a namesake of the sultan who once ruled North India from his citadel in Mehrauli. “It means 'Leader of Men’, and is often mis-spelt as Illtutmish by ignorant historians”, he said. Bonded instantly by the love for history and etymology, I asked him about the hype behind No.5.

The Leader smiled and took out a bottle with a flourish, sprayed the contents on a strip of white paper, waved it in the air and passed it to me. I took a whiff and immediately felt hungry. Not a reaction worthy of classic perfumes but how could I confess this to the Leader? My thoughts went to Pavlov and his dog. Perhaps my mind associated the floral smell with formal parties and weddings where the food and drinks were just around the corner.

Having found an eager student with a hungry expression, Al-tamash proceeded to introduce me to something called Chance. “This one is special”, he said, “It is floral, spicy and woody depending on which of its ingredients makes an appearance - hyacinth, white musk, pink pepper, jasmine, vettiver citrus, iris, and patchouli.”

Patchouli! That rang a bell - hunger all forgotten, my mind now wandered off to a little shop in CP that sold perfume oils in tiny bottles. I remembered being interested in a bottle of patchouli – an interest that was quickly extinguished the moment my eyes met the price tag.

Al-tamash told me that each bottle cost over Rs. 5900 - hardly surprising considering the brand-building effort involved. He told me the difference between eau de toilette and perfumes. Toilettes are cheaper but they contain only a fraction of the active ingredients, so you need to spray copiously for the same impact.

I was introduced to a few more perfumes and I dutifully tucked away the paper strips in my pocket notebook, and removed them as soon as I got back home. But the brief encounter seems to have given my shabby dog-eared scratch pad the airs of Coco herself.