Scented Stories: Day Fifteen

This, is a tale of tea. Of cups and cups of tea. Or maybe not. This is a tale of conversations, sometimes deep and intense, and others dulcet and sunny. Of laughter – so much laughter. And of songs and stories and books. This, to be really honest, is a tale that comes from my very soul.

What is it about a cup of tea that makes everything better, just like that? Why is it that the remedy to all woes, both of the mind and and of the body, boils down (pun very much intended) to this humble beverage? I mean, I have my “I need a cup of gakhir saah that is strong and milky and loaded with sugar” days and I have my “I need a whole pot of black Assam tea and a cup and this room to myself and silence, thank you very much,” days and I have my “I need lemon macaroon flavoured green tea and my best friend by my side” days. Ask any Assamese true to their salt, and they will tell you that tea is an emotion. It is what you offer when guests come home, regardless of the hour. It is through tea that you show how much you love them – because if tea is a mere perfunctory affair for you, you would serve them biscuits and at most homemade nimki. But if you truly, earnestly love them, you will make lusi-bhaji to go with tea. Now *that* is a tea fit for the Queen.

But like I said, this is not really a tale of tea. This is more about conversations, and of late, best friend Audrey and I have been talking a lot about tea, and when I look back at the ten years we have been friends, it occurs to me that some of of our best times together are wrapped around cups of tea. I remember this time when we were about to shift from Singapore to Dubai, and Audrey had come over to celebrate our last hurrah. Must have been because we were packing, or must have been because each time we met felt like a vacation from our everyday lives – but whatever it was, that was the time when we threw all rules out of the door. We had icecream for breakfast because that was what we fancied and breakfast for dinner. But most of all, we had tea parties. Every single day. Sometimes an hour after lunch. Sometimes right before dinner. Armed with the rapidly depleting stocks in my pantry and the excuse that we “needed to finish everything to clean it up anyway” Audrey baked something or the other. Every single day. We drank tea and watched Studio Ghibli movies and exchanged notes on the books we were reading. We had mini spa days where we gave each other hair oil massages and pedicures and manicures, and even put on face packs. We went shopping (quickly discovered none of us were designed for marathon sprees – a minor technical defect) and to the movies. And tying it all together were cups and cups of tea and hours and hours of conversation.

Then five years ago when we met for the last time in Singapore, the elder one had just started kindergarten and I had started working, so Audrey took it upon herself to go pick her up from her kindergarten while I was at work. She would then, with great detail to attention, pick out the day’s best pastries and buns from the neighbourhood bakery to bring home. I would come back home to a tray laden with baked goodies and a pot of tea and my best friend waiting for me asking me about my day. I mean, talk about utter bliss.

Among other things, we would talk about The Dream- that of a quaint tea shop tucked in a sweet little corner somewhere. We’d had it all planned out. There would be two rooms. The first would the actual tea shop where you can buy assorted “Today’s Special” baked stuff that we would make small batches of. And then, step inside with your cup of tea and muffin (if you’re lucky enough to drop by before everything got sold out) and you would find a space filled with hammocks and pouffe stools and cushions and pillows. But most importantly, the walls would be fitted with floor to ceiling shelves that would in turn, be filled with books. You could buy those books too, if you wanted, but if you wanted to simply curl up with a book and your hot cup of tea, then you’d be free to do that too. The in-house experts, aka Audrey and I, would provide you with not just book recommendations, but also tea and book pairings.

While it was wishful thinking on the part of two women who loved their tea and their books (not to mention each other) even as I write this, Audrey is *this* close to fulfilling the dream. She’s days away from beta launching her own tea brand – online for now- and it’s shaping up really well. The woman knows her tea after all. This is also why we had been talking about tea so much.

After my last conversation with Audrey, I started thinking how tea and the friends in my life share an intricate relationship. Best friend Amrita and I, too, bonded over tea, among other things. We started off as colleagues who happened to sit next to each other, but over countless tea breaks we became really, really close. “Chol cha khai” was our gateway into a land away from marking answer scripts and scribbling red marks on students’ notebooks and filing endless paperwork. For those fifteen minutes – half an hour if our timetable allowed us – we could escape to wherever we fancied. Sometimes we found ourselves knee deep in a TV series one of us had been watching, or in a book I had been reading (she’s not exactly a reader), other times in the previous weekend’s grocery runs and how prices vary from store to store, or even the songs on our playlists. It wasn’t very rare for one of us to call each other from the store to decide if we should have strawberry green tea the next week or lemon ginger. Even now, on days I am feeling off kilter, all I need to do is call her up and tell her, “Chol cha khai” and she’d make time for me so we can have tea together. We might not work together and share tea breaks together anymore, but tea is very much a part of our lives.

And the reason why I am talking about tea and the beautiful people I have in my life is because of this perfume:

I discovered Still by Jennifer Lopez through my favourite YouTuber, who talked about this as a gorgeous tea scent that made her feel very zen-like at the end of a tiring day. I was intrigued, even though my impression of JLo perfumes, based on her most famous “Glow”, wasn’t very favourable. The last tea perfume I had owned was Bvlgari Eau The Vert, a classic in its own right, but to my untrained nose, it simply smelled green. Nothing but cool crisp green. This, on the other hand, I found out, has Earl Grey in its top, along with rice. Rice? My curiosity was most certainly piqued. At this price point, I decided it was safe enough to blind buy. With everything going on, I could do with some zen in my life.

The first spray, and I was hooked. Hooked. All I could see was a spa, a posh one at that, with a pretty fountain by my side. There’s a cup of steaming tea by my side, and I am sitting on a plush sofa, waiting for my massage. The light is dim and it is cold inside, and there’s gentle nature sounds – all very soothing. There’s hushed conversation, but not in a distracting way. It merely blends in the background like white noise. Still is surprisingly long lasting, despite being a fresh green scent. I don’t have to refresh it until late in the afternoon, and my husband can smell it on me the moment he enters the room. It is definitely an inoffensive perfume.

Still has slowly crept up into the top ten of my perfumes. Because it smells of tea after all, and what is tea if not the best thing ever? Now all I need is for my two best friends to meet each other, so we can have tea together and smell of this. To friendship then, and tea, and fulfilling dreams, whether it is to open a tea shop or to bring my best friends together. Cheers!

Scented Stories: Day Fourteen

I grew up believing that my mother was the prettiest woman in the whole wide world. All kids do, I suppose. She wasn’t the most fashionable woman, my mother, and in fact had a very limited wardrobe that she made the most of (thank heavens for mix and match mekhela and sadors!) But I loved watching her get ready to go out. An extremely efficient woman, she could drape a sari in seconds and be out of the house within minutes. She was always neatly dressed, yes, but not exactly stylish. She refused to wear make-up, for one. Her hands and feet betrayed the fact that she was used to handling all household chores by herself, and didn’t place self-care at the top priority. Was it even a thing then? Self-care? I wonder.

As a young teenager, I still found my mother pretty, but I also started noticing how – for the want of a better word – polished other women looked. In my mind, I started classifying women into two categories – the ones like my mother, who didn’t pay a lot of attention to how they looked, possibly because they had other more important things to deal with, and the others – the ones who wore pearls around their necks and had smooth hands, the ones who carried pretty purses that didn’t serve any purpose, and especially the ones who smelled good, carrying a soft dainty cloud of expensive perfume around them wherever they went.

As I grew up and found my voice, I started pestering my mother to wear make-up. Not a lot, I would insist, just a hint of pink lipstick and a little bit of eyeliner, please? Deuta would look at me chasing after Ma, eyeliner and lipstick in hand, and shake his hand. “There you go again, with your arms and ammunition,” he’d say. I would force Ma to stand still while I applied her make-up, and when she’d be done, I would ask Deuta, “Doesn’t she look nice? Tell her she looks nice!” Deuta would shrug and mutter something about how she looked better naturally and walk out of the room. I didn’t give up though, and surprisingly, neither did Ma.

Then nearly fourteen years ago, my sister got engaged to my Ji and got showered with sarees and jewellery and tons of other stuff as per ritual. Among them was a perfume. Pure Poison by Dior, it was named, and came in a pretty pearlescent bottle with a purple cap. My sister, in a benevolent mood (and perhaps slightly overwhelmed with everything) gave the perfume to my mother instead. I didn’t need to be told that it was an expensive perfume. I could smell that it was. It was the most gorgeous thing I had ever sniffed, and the first thing that came to my mind in all my ignorance was – oooooh rich people smell. It was like the familiar gardenia from our garden had gone ahead and gotten a posh makeover and had returned draped in a buttery soft cream shawl, crisp and yet warm at the same time.

It felt like an oddity – that perfume – like it didn’t belong in Ma’s shelf among her Tuhina body lotion, Pond’s Dreamflower talc, that Ayur toner she seemed to like a lot and a glycerin bottle (a staple in winters!) But there it sat for months, because Ma would only use it on special occasions, particularly weddings. Each time Ma wore that perfume, her closet would smell good for days on end. That perfume was my teeny tiny window to an alternate life where we were rich enough for that perfume to be Ma’s signature, where Ma was one of those women who carried a hand cream in her purse, and had paator mekhela sador in a whole rainbow of colours. I’d always open the cap and smell it, but was never brave enough to actually spray it on myself. Ma’s bottle got over in just short of a year’s time, but she didn’t buy it again. By then though, Pure Poison had made room for itself in my heart. It became one of those things I coveted, deeply desired to own for a long, long time.

Which is why, last year, when my sister found someone who got special discounts on perfumes, I asked her, no begged her to get Pure Poison for me. So, on Diwali last year when we went to her place, and she asked me to check her closet because there was something for me, I almost skipped on my way to her bedroom. That’s when I realised that the perfume that she’d got for me was the original Poison, instead of Pure Poison. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was the wrong one so I graciously said my thank you and smiled. I came home, opened the bottle, sniffed it once, and shoved it way behind my other bottles. More than the fact that I didn’t like the smell was the disappointment that it wasn’t Pure Poison.

But then, just a few weeks ago, in my continual pursuit of gaining knowledge about perfumes, I stumbled upon Poison once again. It is, after all, an iconic perfume. I read a lot about it – I read other people’s reviews, and I even read it being praised to the roof in the Luca Turin book I was reading. I decided to give it a second chance. Maybe I was ignorant? Maybe I didn’t look at it the way I am supposed to? Poison has been in existence for longer than I have, after all. So, on a tiring Sunday, in between chasing after the toddler and coaxing the elder one to have just one more spoon of rice, I sprayed one tentative, cautious spray onto my wrist. I’d read that one needs to be patient with Poison, and so I told myself I wouldn’t wash it off until I had given it some time. When I entered the living room, my husband turned to me and said, “Wow… what are you wearing? This smells great!” I kept sniffing my wrist in intervals. It was like reading a suspense novel, waiting to see what would happen at the next turn. I could definitely smell the plum, and the anise, an unsettling combination for me to wrap my head around. And then, all I could smell was incense and tuberose with hints of jasmine. Finally when it settled on my skin, it turned all woody and cool. It wasn’t exactly love, but it wasn’t hate either. Poison and I had come to a place where we could maybe be friends. You either love Poison or you hate Poison, I don’t think there is any in-between. That, at least we have in common.

For fourteen years, I have desired one, just one perfume, never really thinking that I could own it. Maybe I felt like I had to deserve it, that I had to be in a certain place in life in order to be able to wear it. Whatever it be, I finally dragged the husband yesterday to the Dior counter at a mall, and asked the salesgirl there if I could smell Pure Poison. Right before I smelled it, I had a moment of hesitation. What if it wasn’t as magical as I had imagined it to be all those years ago? What if it just didn’t smell the same? I needn’t have worried. One sniff, and I was grinning ear to ear. It felt like getting a hug from my Ma after she came back from one of the weddings. I kept sniffing the paper strip over and over again, and on our way back home, I told my husband that if i could get one, just one thing for Christmas, I wanted it to be Pure Poison. I also added that if I could wear just one perfume for the rest of my life, it would be Pure Poison, which is saying something. I can’t wait for Christmas morning now.

Until then, I have time to build my relationship with Poison. If Pure Poison is the pretty little people pleaser, Poison is the emo girl in black lipstick who glares at you as you pass by, daring you to talk to her. She’s hard to like, that one. But then again, sometimes, the friendships that take more time to grow are the ones that stick the longest, no? Here’s hoping for a lifelong relationship with this one, then.

Scented Stories: Day Thirteen

Over the last two weeks, as you can imagine, my husband and I have been talking about perfumes. A lot. I guess it’s par for the course when I have undertaken this pet project of mine to weave stories about perfumes. I have often pulled him to my perfume shelf, opened random perfume bottles and asked him to describe it to me, just to see what he thinks about it. He isn’t a big fan of intense sweet perfumes while I am not very easily impressed by florals anymore. In fact, the one note that I love the most in perfumes – Tonka bean – is something he hates with a passion. Which is why it is very rare for us to find a perfume that we both like, which is quite the conundrum because after all, I have to smell the perfumes he wears and vice versa.

Here’s the thing: I wear a different perfume every day, and given the number of perfumes I have, it doesn’t get repeated very often. 50 perfumes, 30 days in a month, you do the math. But each time, and I kid you not, each time I have worn this particular perfume, he has turned around and asked me, “Whoa! Which perfume are you wearing today?” I’m sure if I were to ask him to pick a favourite from my collection, this is what he would land on:

Victoria’s Secret Bombshell is the most famous of all Victoria Secret perfumes. There are quite a lot of flankers (Intense, Seduction, Gold, Passion and more) but this one seems to be the most popular. And with good reason. Bombshell is a fruity, fresh, citrusy, tropical scent that is quite the attention seeker. I own six Victoria Secret perfumes (XO, Sexy, Love, New York, Blowing Kisses, and this one of course) and while I love each one of them, this one has a very special place. My husband gifted me this a long time ago, and I remember loving it back then, but I ended up misplacing it on a trip back home. I came back dejected. Then, a few years ago, when my best friend and I found out that there was a sale going on in Victoria’s Secret, we decided to pick perfumes for ourselves. Somehow, that day, even though I could have bought Bombshell, I didn’t. I guess the urge to own something new won over nostalgia, particularly because I hadn’t had enough time to make memories with it. I picked up XO, while she, on my suggestion, bought Bombshell. Since then, each time she wore this, I always found myself wishing I had it, because on her it smells almost magical. And because perfumes, for me, is all about association, I started associating Bombshell with my best friend, whom I love more than anything in this world. She’s a practical, dependable woman who is organised beyond belief, and I aspire to be as direct in my thoughts and feelings as her. Just a few months ago, on my birthday, she gifted me this perfume in a gorgeous gift set -including the body lotion, body wash, shimmery oil and a mini bottle to carry in my purse, and thus Bombshell and I were happily reunited. However, just like with Pretty (Elizabeth Arden) the person I associate this perfume with and the vibe I get from it are completely different.

Bombshell, without a doubt, is a sexy perfume. But it is young woman sexy, if you know what I mean. Bombshell is a 21 year old on her third, or maybe fourth night out to the club with her friends. She’s slowly starting to realise that being sexy has got nothing to do with how short her skirt is or revealing her top is – after all, she’d spent the last nights tugging at her skirt and pulling up her top. She stands in front of her mirror and looks up and there – right there – in that tilt of her chin, in that smile of hers, in that mischievous sparkle in her eyes – she finds that elusive sensuality of hers. It’s just a wisp of a feeling right now, a teeny little spark, but one that shows promise. Bombshell is wedding night perfume, very sexy, yes, but also with just enough of that little something to keep it from being truly foxy. It is white satin sheets and lacy curtains and pink pillows as opposed to, well, red.

I know I usually talk about top notes and middle notes and base notes, but a recent conversation with my mother has made me realise that it doesn’t really make much of a difference. In that same conversation, my mother also helpfully pointed out that not everyone feels the same way about perfumes, which is why it may be difficult to relate to this. Thus, it appears that my readership of three (my parents and my best friend) has now dwindled to a sum total of one (thank you for the vote of confidence, darling Mrs. Mukherjee) I’m not saying I will stop writing about perfumes – that ship has unfortunately sailed – but I am considering taking a break. And maybe write that post I’d been meaning to write about how I manifested my failure in the swimming pool by sending out doubts into the universe. Have you heard? I’ve gone back to being scared of lifting my head out of the water. Or maybe that post about how the husband and I attended our first Chinese wedding here in Singapore, and just like in the movies, I got all teary eyed when the groom and bride were exchanging vows. Or about how the best massage of my life was at a Swiss woman’s home on a balcony overlooking nothing but trees just three days ago. Then again, I could be back tomorrow going all, “But wait, I simply HAVE to tell you about this perfume!!!!” Just saying.

On that pointless note, cheers!

Scented Stories: Day Twelve

You know the song “My Girl” by The Temptations? It goes something like this:

I’ve got sunshine, on a cloudy day; When it’s called outside, I’ve got the month of May. I guess you’d say, what can make me feel this way – my girl, my girl, my girl.

Well, the girl I’m talking about is the quintessential spring in a bottle. I would know. I’ve had this one with me for ten years now.

Burberry Brit Sheer (EDT) is the perfume I associate with some of the happiest times of my life. I remember precisely the day I bought this. It was at the Singapore airport, just three weeks after our wedding, when I was still relishing the delicious thrill of saying the words “my husband” over and over again just to get used to it. Everything was brand new and shiny and sparkly to me, and after ten days in Singapore, we were on our way to Hanoi. I couldn’t wait to set up our place. I couldn’t wait to have my very own kitchen. I couldn’t wait to miss calls from friends and call them later to tell them that I was busy doing wife things. And there, sitting at the airport, willing time to move just a little faster, I found myself pacing the duty free area. And that’s where I found this beauty. Back then of course, I didn’t put so much thought into which perfume I was buying. I sniffed this, loved this, and was about to buy this when the very helpful salesgirl pointed me to the direction of a gift set, and oh wouldn’t it be better to layer it with lotion and look at that pretty packaging! I was sold. And maybe slightly taken for a ride because I ended up with a smaller bottle of perfume for the same price. Sigh.

When we reached Hanoi, autumn had set in, with winter approaching fast. The first few weeks were a blur, filled with shopping trips and setting up the kitchen and still figuring out how to cook full fledged Indian meals with the limited resources I had. Before I knew it, the weather changed, seemingly overnight. Thus, one not so fine day, I woke up to grey skies and a relentless rain that couldn’t seem to make up its mind whether to get them poor humans wet or let them stay dry and settled on getting them damp. My mood, so tied up to the weather, took cues from the heavy skies. I became homesick, and overly clingy. I pouted and sulked on Mondays, trudged through the rest of the week and only perked up on Fridays, because Fridays were made for us. I would take particular care while dressing up on Fridays, taking my sweet time picking out the dress and accessories. But when it came to perfume, I’d find myself reaching for Brit Sheer invariably. Friday evening was date night – movie, dinner and a walk around Hoan Kiem Lake – the works. And when I came back home, my scarf and sometimes his sweater, would still be smelling of my pretty pink perfume. The homesickness passed within weeks, the winter within months, but Brit Sheer stayed with me.

With top notes of green almond, lime, pear and lemongrass, this perfume’s opening is very fresh, very citrusy. The middle is a harmonious almond, sugar and peony. The base is vanilla, mahogany and amber. On me somehow, the lime and pear stand out the most. I don’t get any vanilla or amber. This is a very safe, crowd-pleasing mild perfume that would definitely make you feel like you’re walking through a field of flowers on a crisp spring morning. This makes a great work perfume because it doesn’t project as much and sits very close to your skin. It’s also perfect for days when you can’t seem to decide what you’re in the mood for. The only drawback that I can think of is that it doesn’t last very long, but if you’re the kind of woman who carries her perfume in her bag, then this shouldn’t pose a problem.

When my first bottle finished, I didn’t have this perfume with me for quite some time because I didn’t feel the need for it. I think I have evolved so much from that naive newly wed with stars in her eyes. I have gained so much more experience and perspective that I barely identify with that young woman who’d let the salesgirl tell her which perfume to buy. I only bought this a couple of years ago on an impulse trip to Mustafa Centre, for nostalgia’s sake. Would I pick this up again if I were to meet it for the first time? Probably not. But would I buy this perfume again when this bottle of mine ends? Most certainly yes. After all, one doesn’t stay newly wed for very long, and if there’s one perfume that can take me back to my days of being young and in love and walking hand in hand with my husband in the streets of Hanoi, this one has to be it. This comes particularly helpful on days when the husband’s snores wake the baby up and I have to put her back to sleep. Or on days when I have to remind him to do something for the umpteenth time and he calls me a nag. Ten years of being married, and all I can say is hey, marriage is hard, and it can do with every bit of help that comes its way. Even if it is a perfume.

Scented Stories: Day Eleven

The ones in awe of her call her audacious. They marvel at her extravagance. The others, shaking their head in disapproval, label her attention-seeking, bordering on vulgar. But no one, no one can deny her presence. When she steps inside the room, heads turn. Conversations stop mid-sentence, and while some steal discreet glances, others stare at her without pretence. She knows all of this, of course. She commands it; thrives in this attention. Basks in the eye-blinding white of the spotlight. Blood red rubies and glittering diamonds. Billowing gowns of silk brocade. She owns them like the queen she is. After all, she wasn’t born to fit in. She was always meant to stand out.

Today’s perfume is that bold intense spirit captured in the most gorgeous perfume bottle I have ever seen:

Marc Jacobs Decadence is the boldest perfume I own so far. Even though I bought the bottle nearly six years ago, I have used it just four times. And the last two were just last week.

Why buy it then, you ask? Well, I call it “The Dubai Effect.” Six years ago, we were living in Dubai and not particularly enjoying it. After less than a year in the land of sand and gold, I was ready to leave it all behind me. And yet, I needed a souvenir to remind me of this chapter of my life, because I believe that our trials shape us just as much (and sometimes even more) than our triumphs. Walking around the perfume shop at duty free, I found myself craving for a quintessential Middle Eastern woody rose. Something that would be reminiscent of the sheer opulence I associate with Dubai. And there she was, this pretty bottle, sitting in the limelight, almost daring me to ignore her. How could I not pick her up?

It was awe at first sniff. I wouldn’t call it love. I think it was more like “I want to be the kind of woman who would wear this perfume.” Never before have I come across a perfume that is truer to its name – Decadence is indeed intensely decadent. It is one of those perfumes that you have be bold enough to wear, or else it is going to wear you, if you know what I mean. With top notes of plum, saffron and iris, middle notes of orris, jasmine sambac and Bulgarian rose, and base notes of vetiver, papyrus and liquidambar, Decadence is sure to bring to your mind huge ballrooms with chandeliers and plush red carpet and velvet drapes. If you close your eyes, you can almost hear the swish of silk, the clinking of champagne flutes and the hum of conversation.

Until a few weeks ago, I’d have told you I have a love-hate relationship with this perfume. I’d once worn this to a dinner, but I must have used one spray too many, because the car ride to the venue was unbearable. It turned out to be headache-inducing for me and suffocating for the poor husband. I didn’t dare to wear it again. But of late, I have been drawn away from the fresh florals to the dark side of sweet woody musky ones, which is why probably I wore this twice in the last week. And it was like falling in love all over again, followed by the realisation that I have finally become the woman I had desired to be all those years ago. The one who doesn’t shy away from owning who she is, who doesn’t feel the need to tone down her persona to make it more palatable for everyone else around her, the one who simply has to be honest to her true self even if it means ruffling a few feathers. After all the years of trying to blend in with the walls, I finally don’t mind standing out.

Should you pick this perfume up, do wear it on nights. It is definitely not a day perfume. Take out that dress you’ve set aside as “too much” and pair it with those heavy earrings that you bought because you thought they were pretty but never found the occasion to wear. Wear those heels – no they’re not too high – and when you walk, walk like you own the world. Because you do. Let them know you’ve arrived.

Scented Stories: Day Ten

I grew up in a very small town. Now I don’t know what comes to your mind when you think of a small town, but whatever it is, think a little smaller. Our main bazaar was just a street with shops on either side, mostly family owned businesses, your regular mom and pop stores. We had four cinema halls – one has now turned into a bank, one is a shopping centre, one designated a landmark of historical importance and the other perhaps still announcing the 11am, 1pm and 3pm, 7 pm and late night shows of a Hindi dubbed B-grade English movie. We didn’t have malls. We didn’t have bookstores that sold English books, unless you counted textbooks, until 2000. So naturally, I remember very well the first time I went shopping for “perfumes” in our town.

The year must have been 2007, and I had recently returned from the capital city of Guwahati, which, compared to Tezpur, was a teeming metropolis. Despite a meagre monthly allowance that I could barely stretch over the month, my innate desire to find something that smelled good won over me. Thus I found myself in the one store that had been recently renovated, with sparkly white tiles and glass windows, but more importantly, that had an entire aisle of good smelling stuff and not just a lone shelf behind the salesperson’s counter. And there, sitting among the shiny Charlies, all glowing red, blue, golden and silver, was a pretty pink deodorant bottle with a grey cap. “Do you want to try this?” the helpful salesgirl asked me. “Ummm, could I?” I asked hesitantly. She promptly took off the cap, and sprayed the deodorant into the cap. I remember taking that first sniff and sensing that happy bubbly feeling in my heart that I now know as falling in love with a smell. And I fell in love hard. So hard I ran out of three bottles in quick succession. Sometime in the next year I did collect two or three decent perfumes- actual perfumes- to call my own, but the one that fetched me the most compliments, was this humble deodorant. Powdery, floral, and very feminine, it became my signature scent during my university days, the one that lingered on my t-shirts and kurtas. The one my sheets smelled of. Love Her Madly by Revlon became not just my favourite scent, but also an extension of me, somehow – the wannabe rocker chick with a pixie hair cut who everyone found intimidating, the girl who went for long walks around the campus with her earphones plugged in her ears and her hands deep inside her pockets, the girl everyone talked about but no one seemed to make an effort to talk to. Infamous and unapologetic. That’s who I was.

And then, surprising everyone who proclaimed that I would only ever focus on getting a job, flirt with everyone in my vicinity and never find one to settle down with, I became the first in my batch to get married and get out of everybody’s life, straight to Vietnam. Not only that, I even embraced motherhood quite early in the game. Gone was the rocker chick and the pixie cut. I lived the Mom life. My uniform of choice became baggy shorts and loose fitted tees. My speakers belted out nursery rhymes. My life had changed so much in just four years that I could barely recognise myself in the photos from my uni days.

Until one fine day, when we had an unannounced visitor to our place, and she smelled exactly like Love Her Madly. It was unmistakable – the same florals, the same powdery notes. I wondered if I should ask her about it. I wasn’t aware of perfume etiquette back then (now of course, I’ll even ask random strangers on trains which perfume they are wearing) but I finally mustered courage to ask her if it was, by any chance, Love Her Madly. “It’s Kenzo!” she said, “That bottle with the flower.” I knew what she meant immediately, which perfume she was talking about. It’s pretty hard to miss a bottle that looks like this:

I kept the name in mind, but I didn’t quite feel the need to buy the perfume. Maybe because I no longer was the young girl in university? Maybe because I’d stumbled across this perfume way too often to find it very unique? But then, six years ago, on Valentine’s Day, when I met my husband after work for a dinner date, all dolled up, he greeted me with a kiss on my cheek and this perfume bottle he’d picked up in an atrium sale while waiting for me. I took a tentative first sniff, and I was back in Tezpur University, walking past the football field in the evening, fighting off the bugs that hovered around the massive field lights. I couldn’t help but smile. It was like meeting an old friend.

Someone once asked me, “How do you even describe a smell to someone who hasn’t smelled it?” The answer is, you can’t. I mean, I could talk about how it is, say, citrusy, or floral, but unless you’re into perfumes like I am, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to you. What I can do, instead, is try and describe the feeling it evokes. Wrap it around a feeling that is familiar, so that you get the vibe of it. 

If I had to describe the vibe of Flower by Kenzo, I’d say it is that of comfort, specially the everyday underrated kind that we tend to take for granted. Like falling asleep on a rainy afternoon without intending to, waking up feeling like a whole new person, and then drinking a cup of tea. Like coming back home from a walk outside in the rain and putting on dry clothes. Or that of lazily lingering over a meal and eating a little too much and surrendering to delicious food coma, feeling your eyes drooping as you try to keep up with the conversation. Or even sleeping on sheets that have been worn soft from wash after wash after wash. And while I would have never associated this smell with baby powder back in my university days, now, to me, it smells very much like a squeaky clean baby out of her bath, dusted with Johnson’s baby powder. It is that indescribable tenderness that would glow within me each time I held my newborn babies close to me and stare at their rose bud lips, pouting in sleep, their palms open in surrender, their tiny chest rising up and down. It is innocence itself, a smell I wish to hug close to me. Interestingly, despite its mild nature, Flower by Kenzo lasts quite long on me, even in this Singapore heat.

The top notes of Flower by Kenzo are Bulgarian rose, hawthorn, black currant, and mandarin orange. The middle notes are parma violet, rose, opoponax, and jasmine and the base notes are vanilla, white musk and incense. To be honest, I don’t get much incense or vanilla in the dry down. On me, this perfume is very powdery and musky in the dry down. But I don’t even need to talk about notes here. Flower by Kenzo smells exactly like baby powder would. Whether it’s a good thing or bad thing is up to you to decide.

As I was writing this post, I looked up Love Her Madly, and realised that they still sell it in India! I had half a mind to call up my mother and ask her to order one for me, just for nostalgia’s sake. Reason prevailed though, as I realised that even if my mother did buy it for me, it’s not like I can fly there and smell it there. So it’ll have to wait. But buy it I will. Even if I have my Flower by Kenzo. Because while I love the mother in me, I think, every now and then I should honour the rocker chick in me as well.

Scented Stories: Day Nine

She is ageless; frozen in time on the cusp of youth and age. She is elegant, effortlessly so. She walks with dignity, her head held high, her steps sure and graceful, and never, never in a hurry. She wears pearls on her ears, and there’s pearls on the cuffs of the full sleeves of her white chiffon dress. It seems to read her mind, this dress of hers, for it sways and swishes ever so gently, never carried away by the wind, never defying discipline. Her hair is done up in a simple French knot, and not a strand is out of place. Everything about her is a portrait of simplicity, except for her lips. Her lips betray the boldness within her, glowing like ember. They are painted a deep, deep red, and to anyone else they might look dissonant, like that one clarinet out of tune in an otherwise flawless symphony. But to the ones who know her, her indomitable spirit masked by a benign veneer, she is right where she belongs, red lips and white dress and all.

And if this spirit, this impossibly beautiful harmony, were to be bottled into one gorgeous smell, then this would be it.

There are few who know their perfumes who wouldn’t recognise this one. Issey Miyake’s L’eau D’Issey might not be an iconic perfume (yet) but chances are you can’t walk into a perfume store without stumbling upon this one – and its multitude of flankers. It’s been around since 1992 after all. For me though, L’eau D’Issey has a whole different meaning. I wouldn’t be writing about it otherwise.

So where Pretty by Elizabeth Arden was the perfume that I associated with my once simple sister who suddenly took a sip of some secret potion and came back all posh, L’eau D’Issey is the perfume that I associate with her now. A devout fitness expert, an entrepreneur, a woman who knows exactly what she wants and how to get it – she is not your everyday cup of tea. You’ll have to get past the polished patina – which very few people do, by the way – to see some semblance of that young girl whose idea of a good evening was one surrounded by books and quiet. I once asked her what her favourite perfume was (my brother-in-law makes sure her closet is filled with one gem after the other) and without the slightest hesitation, without even taking a few seconds to think about it, she said, “Why, my Issey Miyake, of course!” So when my 30th birthday rolled in, and my sister asked me what to get me, I replied, with the same lack of hesitation, with that same immediate enthusiasm, “Why, your Issey Miyake, of course.”

Truth be told, I was quite excited for my 30th birthday. My daughter was two and a half years old, I’d just signed the contract for my first novel to be published, and we had moved back to Singapore after a tedious year in Dubai. I couldn’t wait to see what life had in store for me. The husband, after four birthdays of hit and miss gifts had finally landed on the perfect spot – a whole bunch of Roald Dahl and Famous Five books. What he didn’t know, because I had never told him, was that it had been a childhood dream of mine to own the whole series of Famous Five books because I’d only ever read the ones from the library or on loan from friends. My first thought, however, when I got those books, was not that my dream had finally come true, but that the little one would now be growing in a house with these books on the shelves.

We had dinner at my favourite place later that night. My sister’s family joined us, obviously, as did a few other family friends. The cake was from Awfully Chocolate, a birthday staple for me, and had the face of Harry Potter iced on it. My sister, true to her word, gifted me the Issey Miyake perfume and a cheeky card with instructions to use sunscreen and an elaborate age-defying night time skin care routine now that I’d turned 30. The food was on point, the littles were one well-behaved and everyone had a great time. I came back home a very, very happy woman, feeling like I was initiated into the sacred club of women in their 30’s, the ones who had their lives together, the ones who knew themselves, the ones who were young enough to be not called old, and yet matured enough to be taken seriously. L’Eau D’Issey was thus another smell that marked a transition in my life.

Four years down the line, when my 34th birthday rolled in last year, I couldn’t have been a more different woman. The younger one was three and a half months old, and the nights were nothing short of torture. I’d spent the nights crying, wondering if I’ll ever sleep and how on earth was I to go through the next day. I’d spend the day dreading the nights, catching winks every now and then, but none feeling quite as fortifying as a solid night’s sleep. My husband, way past trying to surprise me with a gift, kept asking me what I wanted, and I, for once, had no idea. I wondered if we could just move past my birthday without doing anything about it, pretending like it didn’t exist. All I really, really wanted, was to sleep.

Nothing prepared me for what I found later that day, at my sister’s place. On the table were gifts (note the plural) waiting for me, and balloons and a cheesecake, and in the kitchen was a grand meal my brother-in-law had cooked for me. I walked around as if I were in a daze (partly because I was so sleep deprived) but mostly letting the feeling sink in – that of being loved, that of being taken care of. When the time came to open the gifts, I realised the best part was waiting for me all along – a new bottle of L’Eau D’Issey from my sister, because my old one had finished.

L’Eau D’Issey is a floral aquatic perfume, and a potent one at that. It’s got a lot happening in it, for sure. The top notes are lotus, melon, freesia, rose water, rose, calone and cyclamen. The middle notes are lily of the valley, lily, carnation and water peony. And the base is musk, tuberose, exotic woods, osmanthus, cedar, sandalwood and amber. Tons of florals, tons. I don’t think I have come across many perfumes with floral notes on their base. The florals are meant to be fleeting after all. But L’eau D’Issey is unapologetically floral. It can be headache inducing to some because of how potent it is, but I am yet to meet someone who hasn’t liked the smell. It is not so loud as to screech, because it is very much sophisticated. This is a perfume that doesn’t need to yell to be heard. Much like my sister.

I wear L’Eau D’Issey on days when I want to remind myself that lurking behind the woman in baggy shorts and loose tees is someone who can be all put together if she wants to. I wear it on days when I want to evoke a sense of elegance when I feel none (ummm, fake it till you make it?) I wear it whenever I need to remind myself that growing old doesn’t necessarily have to be something to dread. Because honestly, I would love to be that women in a white chiffon dress, commanding awe and intimidation in equal parts. Until then, I’ll walk about the house smelling of flowers, with the toddler climbing all over me, blowing bubbles on my tummy and tugging at my shirt.

Scented Stories: Day Eight

Just last month, my husband and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. A few months before the anniversary, the husband ordered a ridiculously heavy white lehenga for me to wear, and booked a gorgeous villa at a resort in Sentosa island. While we’d made grand plans involving our families and close friends for this milestone anniversary, our families couldn’t travel obviously because of Covid. Further restrictions in Singapore stated that we could only have two household visitors a day to our place. Even the hotel refused to allow us to have guests over at the resort.So we gave up on all hopes of grandeur and trimmed our celebration plans down to the very essence of it. Which is why on the Saturday before our actual anniversary, we invited my best friend and her husband over for lunch, I got dressed in that ridiculous lehenga, and we sat down to watch our wedding video from ten years ago.

The first thing that struck me as we watched the video was how achingly young I looked. During the rituals leading up to the actual wedding, I didn’t wear any make-up at all, not even lipstick. And when I had to read the declaration of our marriage out loud right after our court registration was done, my voice sounded meek and unsure. My husband turned to me and said, “And look at you now, with that booming thundering voice commanding over my life!” Or something to that affect. The actual words don’t matter. The realisation does.

When I look at the way I used to dress ten years ago, and the way I dress now, or the way I used to carry myself back then and the way I carry myself now, all that comes to my mind is how much more confident I am now. While I stared longingly at young me’s thin waist and flat tummy and that sharp jawline, I also felt like reaching out to her and saying, “Chin up, baby. Speak louder. Walk taller. Take up space.” The young me wouldn’t have dared to wear a rep lipstick. Or worn a perfume that invited attention.

I believe that’s a thing, isn’t it? It’s easy to wear crowd pleasing perfumes, the pastel florals and yellow citruses. Maybe even the watered down fruity perfumes once in a while. It’s easy to wear them because you know they won’t offend anyone, and most importantly, won’t make people notice you. So if you’re a person who doesn’t want to invite attention, you would gravitate towards such perfumes. I’d know – I used to be one of them. My brother-in-law – who I believe has the best taste in perfumes AND clothes – is the other kind. If perfumes are our calling cards, his is a billboard with neon lights that announces his arrival wherever he goes. It’s not just his perfume though. That man has a personality to match. He’s the life of the party, the guy telling the funniest jokes, the one around whom everyone’s seated, hanging on to each word he says. I am not that person, at all. In fact, throw me in a room full of people, and I will find a nook and try to make myself invisible. But strangely enough, when it comes to the way I dress, I have started to believe that I’m not overdressed, everyone else is simply underdressed. My red lipstick shines bright like a siren, and my perfumes? Well, I am finally warming up to the idea of wearing my personality on my wrist. And other pulse points.

Today’s perfume is an ode to this transition from naive and innocent to bold and confident.

Like all good things, Guerlain’s La Petite Robe Noire (EDT) came to me in a small vial first. A colleague of mine – the same woman, incidentally, who inspired me to wear Burberry Weekend – gifted a book to me for Bihu, along with a 5ml miniature bottle of this perfume. “I imagine you spending your weekend lost in the book, smelling very pretty,” she told me. I dabbed a bit on my wrist right away, and it was instant fireworks and fanfare in my brain. I mean, talk about dramatic! I bought a full size bottle soon after, of course. And I remember thinking how this could very well become my next signature scent.

La Petite Robe Noire is predominantly a sour cherry perfume. At first sniff, it smells almost spicy to me, even though there are no spice notes listed for the perfume. The top notes are rose, jasmine and green notes, the middle is where the sour cherry, apple, orange blossom and black currant come in, and at the base of it is white musk, patchouli and white amber. The sour cherry and the black currant lends this perfume a dramatic and almost rich overtone. The EDP is apparently a richer version of it, and this one’s a lighter affair that fares better in summer days, but to me, this is not your everyday wear-to-work or even brunch perfume. I find myself reaching for this perfume whenever I make the extra effort to dress up, when I know I am going to wear heels, for instance (I’m a flats woman through and through) or wear foundation and blush (I usually wear lipstick and mascara and call it a day)

This is definitely a sexy, date-night scent. I’m talking glossy silks and swishing satins, fiery red lipstick and sky high heels, velvety wine and decadent chocolate desserts. And when the night is over, long after you reach home, the gorgeous wisps of cherry lingering on your skin will remind you of the best parts of the evening – the intimate conversations, the stolen kisses, and the walk to the cab, your finger intertwined.

Scented Stories : Day Seven

I had a pretty idyllic childhood, if I may say so myself. We had a cozy house by the river, with ancient trees towering over our walls, and only the birds punctuating the ever pervading silence. But what made my childhood epic, was all the time I shared with my elder sister. Despite a significant age gap, I always felt like I was her equal. Except when our older cousins came visiting, that is. Then I was relegated to the annoying little sister who wasn’t allowed to take part in their sensational conversations about boys and bras and what not. But other than that, we were thick as thieves, sometimes literally. We were co-conspirators, secret sharers, and duet partners. I looked up to her like she was a goddess. She hated dressing up and drawing attention to herself. She wore the palest colours, and refused to show skin when draping a saree. She didn’t want anything to do with make-up, and would rather spend her time with her nose buried in a book or plucking on the strings of her guitar than spend time with friends. Not that we had a lot of them growing up, to be honest. We were each other’s best friends. And like everyone else, we had our own share of private jokes, some of them bordering on gross. We weren’t raised to be dainty delicate darlings. No, sir. We shared notes on what our farts smelled like, and kept a tally of how long it took for everyone in the family to finish their morning business.

But then something happened as we grew up. My sister left home to study engineering, and having completed her degree, went to Delhi to do her MBA. And then, one winter, she came back home, her hair all glossy and, for the lack of a better word, expensive-looking. When she opened her suitcase, I couldn’t see a single t-shirt or dress that I had seen her wear before. She even talked in an alien language, about fashion and trends and colours that looked good in the winter but not in the summer and *gasp*, she even had eye-liner and gloss in her bag! What stood out to me most was this lush black jacket that she had, an overcoat kind of thing that made any outfit look a hundred times more classy. She’d wear a pair of fashionably tattered jeans, a simple shirt and throw on that overcoat on top of it, and wear big sunglasses and voila, gone was my sister, to be replaced by this impossibly cool woman I wanted to follow everywhere. At once, it felt like an invisible barrier had been built. I almost felt shy around her, conscious of my own fashion choices and common hairstyle. While before I’d lay claim to everything that she wore as mine, now I wasn’t so sure. Once, when she was out, I sniffed through her bag, trying to find some semblance of the sister I knew among her things, but all I could tell was that it even smelled different. And this was what it smelled of:

Pretty by Elizabeth Arden will always remain the smell I associate with this new, classier version of my sister – so fashionably aloof, so mysterious and distant. Fart jokes? Forget about them. I’d weigh my words before uttering them to her so sounded wiser. I remember this one time, long after she got married, when I was staying with her for the summer. Even though she told me I could pick whatever I wanted from her closet to wear, rummaging through her shelves felt almost wrongful, like I was trespassing some very private place. I remember looking with awe at her accessories, the stack after stack of dresses and tops, and most of all, her perfumes. She didn’t have a lot, but the three of four that she had were divine. I took my time smelling them, craving them, and wishfully hoping that if I could smell like her maybe, just maybe, I would be like her.

Make no mistakes, my sister is not the kind who would wear a pink floral scarf or wear pink dangly earrings and carry a pink purse. But to me, Pretty is all about that. It is a floral citrusy perfume with just enough powdery notes to turn it delicate and soft instead of crisp and fresh. With tops notes of orange blossom, peach and mandarin orange, middle notes of peony, jasmine, lily and iris, and base notes of musk, woody notes and amber, Pretty sounds quite run-of-the-mill, and maybe it is. It has two things going for it, though. It is extremely easy on the pockets, making it a very safe blind buy because even if you don’t like it (that would make you an aberration), you don’t feel too bad. The second is that it is quite long lasting, which came as a surprise to me as well. I put it to the ultimate test just recently, when for the sake of writing this post, I wore it after months just to remind myself of it. It was a hot sweltering Singapore day, and I had a whole lot of cooking to do. I am talking heavy duty Indian recipes, with fish and chicken and onion-ginger-garlic and the whole arsenal of spices here. And yet, sometime in the afternoon, all sweaty and tired, I could still smell Pretty on me.

Pretty is unpretentious. It doesn’t claim to be something it is not. Pretty is Drew Barrymore in a pink floral dress riding a bicycle through a field of tulips. Pretty is a posy of handpicked wild flowers plonked in a vase with water without being cleverly arranged. Pretty is those white lilies wrapped in brown paper you bought at the supermarket, nestled next to the oranges you picked up on sale. Pretty is that uber cool sister of yours who comes home in an impossibly fashionable outfit, and embraces you in a hug that luckily still feels the same. Pretty is beauty, warmth and nostalgia all wrapped in one. Ah, bliss.

Scented Stories : Day Six

As I sit to write this, it comes to my mind that sometimes, the way I look at a perfume has got nothing to do with its personality, and everything to do the stories I wrap around it. Case in point is today’s perfume, which speaks to me in a very different way than it would to everyone else.

Each time I smell Burberry Weekend on me, I am immediately taken to a long corridor with classrooms on one side and a massive football field on the other side. I can hear kids clamouring in the background – the younger ones have recess one period before the elder ones do – and I can hear the faint click-clack of my own kitten heels on the floor. I am dressed in formals, but the kind I can tolerate – with laces and ruffles to take away the edge and to stop it from making black and white boring. It’s a pale pink shirt with ruffles along the button line and puffed sleeves, and a black lace pencil skirt that falls just below my knees. And around my collar is a floral chiffon scarf, one of my favourites from that shop in Hanoi. I am carrying that journal where I scribble all my to-do lists and my textbook and my bottle of water. In my mind, I am going over the scene from Merchant of Venice that I want to take up that day – one where I would have to talk about Jessica and Shylock and Lancelot Gobbo – and it is with surprise that I realise that I am actually looking forward to teaching Shakespeare. Later I have a very interesting excerpt from a Bill Bryson for my students to analyse for writer’s effect. I walk with a skip to my step with the renewed reminder that I am very, very lucky to be someone who wakes up in the morning excited to go to her workplace.

I first smelled Burberry Weekend on a colleague I highly looked up to, because she was everything I aspired to be – amazingly well-dressed, always put together, and smelling great. She was the kind who would leave a trail of perfume wherever she went. She told me this was the perfume that wouldn’t budge, and was the only one that could take the rigours of an entire day of walking up and down the stairs, taking up to seven classes, and then coming back to complete preparations for the next day. Finding a tester bottle (100ml!) that very weekend in an atrium sale at the mall next to my sister’s condo, for a very reasonable price, felt like providence. From that day onwards, this became the bottle I reached out for every single morning. Right after I put on my red, red lipstick, and right before I slipped onto my kitten heels.

Burberry Weekend is probably one of the most unique perfumes I have in my collection. Take a look at the notes on Fragrantica, and you’ll see oddities like mignonette, sage, blue hyacinth, red cyclamen, and violet root. I don’t think I have seen these notes in any of my other perfumes, leave alone a combination of the above. This probably explains why it is so hard for me to describe this smell. The amazing thing about this is that it smells almost the same in the dry down as it does in the opening – a fresh, straight out of the shower smell, with just a tinge of the compact powder smell and maybe, just maybe, a hint of oil. So imagine you doing your make-up in your bathroom right after your shower, improbable as it sounds, and your hair is still wrapped in a towel and you can still smell the soap on your skin. A lot of reviewers have called it dated and old-fashioned, but to me it just smells classy. I bought a second bottle after I finished my first one, and have realised that I don’t reach out for it as much as I used to when I was working. Maybe because I have stopped teaching, and I don’t associate with the teacher in me anymore?

This is not a perfume that sits unannounced in a corner, nope. In a room full of pink flowers with dainty petals, this one is a flamboyant yellow, with voluptuous petals that immediately draw your attention. You’d want to go sit next to them. You’d want to bathe in their gorgeousness. Which is why I wouldn’t call this a safe blind buy. While not exactly a polarising smell, I still belief that you’d have to have a certain something to like this. But smell it once if you can, please, and then make up your mind. This is exactly what you would want for yourself if you don’t want to smell like everyone else in the room.