Chapter 12: conversations on legacy
At the corner of Shah Almi Road and Rang Mahal Chowk in Lahore, a sole building, half-burnt, still stands bearing the words, Gobind Ram Kahan Chand, Estd. 1805, Hindustan Commercial Bank. The story goes that Gobind Ram, trader of achar, chutneys and sherbets, owned a shop on the ground floor of this building, and was also amongst the partners of this branch of the bank, which had been newly constructed at the time . As perfumers and flavourists, they were best known for their khuss-khuss sherbet.
On August 14, 1947, the family was forced to flee across the border on the last night train, after their shops and factories had been set ablaze. Among them was 22-year-old Kharaiti Lal Bhatia. Son of Kahan Chand, grandson of Gobind Ram, he was one of the heirs to their fragranced empire. Amidst the Partition riots, the family could carry little across, but Kharaiti Lal made sure to bring the journals and vials of his perfume compositions. In Delhi, they started from scratch, making mostly sherbets from their new home in Daryanganj and later Chandni Chowk. But the young perfumer continued to experiment, creating oils and ittars, perfumes and aldehydes, even shaving creams and moisturizers.
Over seven decades have passed when I meet his granddaughter, Pallavi Bhatia, in Delhi. We sit in her office, accompanied by ornate, antique flacons, large glass vials that hold ingredients and musty journals. Every inch of the small room is soon suffused in the smell of perfume, as we open bottle after bottle, gingerly smelling the aged contents. Pallavi was born in the early 90s and was only a toddler when Kharaiti Lal Bhatia passed away, but while speaking about the family’s pre-Partition perfumed legacy, she holds a cut-glass bottle up to the light.
‘My family discussed Partition quite openly, actually. It was told like a story, but I don’t think I realized the gravity of what it truly meant. My grandmother would recall how the homes and monuments had been blackened during the War, and then merely a few years later, how during Partition, they would hide inside their homes from the rioters. If the children screamed or cried, they would be gagged. She told these stories so casually, so matter-of-factly, that though I listened to them, I never quite understood the meaning of this partition. But even to a child, these fragments and bits of memory were terrifying.’
I nod sadly, and pick up a companion vial to the one she holds in her hand. It is horizontally rectangular in shape, with perforations running across its surface to create a very chic, modern bottle. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and my fingers graze the layer of dust and fuzz that coats its body.
‘Here,’ Pallavi says to me, uncorking a bottle that holds a dark, vicious liquid. She hands me the globular glass cork, whose inside is covered with the liquid, and I bring it up to my nose. As the fragrance is released into the air, she inhales deeply and concentrates, ‘This has menthol, nagarmotha… my grandfather loved working with these ingredients…kewra, patchouli. Their khuss was particularly well-known. In fact, in the serial, Buniyad, set in Lahore during Partition, there is a mention of the khuss sherbet from Gobind Ram Kahan Chand! Nobody did khuss the way we did; it is usually green, but ours was a deep, luscious brown.’
‘Did you always want to be a perfumer, continue the work of your forefathers?’ I ask her.
‘I suppose, if Partition had not happened, we would have prospered in an undivided India. But, all six shops that my family owned across Lahore were burned during the riots. When the location in Hindustan Commercial Bank began burning, we were told that until three months later, a dense sweetness hung in the air, as a reminder of what no longer was. A trail of fragrant beauty and communal terror, combined. It’s a miracle that the building still stands, actually.
‘The only place my grandfather truly felt comfortable was in his lab on Lawrence Road; this is where I, too, am most comfortable now. I was in my mid-20s when I came across seven journals on perfumery that he had kept over the years. Some of them dated back to well before Partition. I pored over these journals again and again, I became fixated with the formulas, even though I did not understand them. I think it was the fact that these journals had survived events as catastrophic as Partition and migration, and it was because of the esoteric formulas within them, that the family was able to rebuild even part of their fragrant empire in independent India. These formulas are sacred, and they inspired me to learn perfumery.’
She hands me one of the journals from the table. The spine cracks as I open it, and so I flip through gently. There are places where the ink has bled through to the other side. Notes and cards have been tucked in to the spine, wisps of paper fall out as I turn the aged pages.
Monday, December 27, 1955, the date on a page reads, Lavender, Ylang, Geranium, Musk, Benzoin, a touch of natural Rose, is an initial list of ingredients for a perfume called Fancy Boquette. On another page, the ingredient list for Fantasia is far more chemical in nature, consisting of Hydroxy Cintronellal and Beta Ionone. There are pages of crossed-out formulas in English, Hindi and Urdu, and numbers, worked and re-worked, over the years. The dates range from the early 1940s to several decades later.
‘There is a perfume called Himalayan Bouquet that my grandfather started composing in 1942, and it was what first caught my eye,’ Pallavi says as she searches through the journals, ‘Until 1946, he was still perfecting the formula. But even then, it remained unfinished. Then he picked up the formula yet again in 1962, in Delhi, and finally completed it to his satisfaction. Twenty long years, he worked on it. That was my first introduction to perfumery, the fact that it was not unusual for perfumers to work on the same formulas for decades. It is both an obsession and a labour of love.’
Pallavi tells me that the foundation of every perfume under her brand, Olfa Originals, is always her grandfather’s notes - menthol, rose, oud, nagarmotha, lemongrass, mitti ittar, jasmine - tweaked to the modern palette. It was not the fragrances that connected her to his work, but the formulas, the handwriting, the connection to a legacy that had persisted for generations.
‘Do you feel any connection to Lahore?’ I ask her, as we begin to wrap up our interview.
She sighs dreamily, ‘I wish I could see where my grandfather’s perfumery used to be, where he learnt his alchemist craft, learnt to fall in love with the essence of flowers and leaves. I wish I could go to Lahore and stand before the building that still bears my ancestors’ names. Like so many people, I wish I could see where my legacy began, long before a line was drawn in the land.’
I leave her office that afternoon, covered in fragrance, both her grandfather’s and hers – an amalgamation of old and new, classic and modern. It hurts me to learn that Kharaiti Lal Bhatia never lived to see his granddaughter become a perfumer, and yet even posthumously, he became her greatest teacher. In some sense, through the bequeathment of formulas and the objects he once used, the legacy remains unbroken.
