As Indians, we have this wonderful quality where fragrance fills our homes, our lives. It is in the hair of someone walking past us, a temple around the corner with its incense burning bright, a pot of chai boiling, a crowded fish market, or a bustling flower market filled to the brim with strings of tuberose, jasmine, lilies, and carnations.Scent is our superpower. It is also perfectly interlinked with memory. So, I wanted to turn my attention to the rising number of niche Indian-origin fragrance brands cropping up around me.‘A romanticised lens’What is it about scent that makes it a cultural shorthand for home — one that a new generation of perfumers and entrepreneurs is now trying to bottle? I posed this question to Sai Pogaru of Rahasya Fragrance, a new niche Indian fragrance brand that caught my eye at Selfridges in London. “Scent was always linked to travel and exploration. When you smell something, it immediately transports you somewhere,” he explains, of the brand’s scents that have names like ‘Hill Station’ (for that very particular Indian experience of retreating to the mountains or hills in the summer).
Rahasya founders (from left) Sachit Sood, Utkarsh Vijayvargiya and Sai Pogaru
