What does jasmine smell like? Sweet. Intense. Floral. But ask a perfumer that question and the answer can be quite different. “Banana-apricot jam and horse sweat and mothball,” replies perfumer Monika Ghurde after a thought. Jasmine is one of her favourite flowers. “It is complex. To recreate its fragrance, it takes around 300 components,” she says.
Monika started out as a photographer. She then discovered the art of perfumery. “I was always obsessed with smell. Anything given to me, I would always sniff it first. My brother used to call me a sniffer dog,” laughs Monika. After she moved to Chennai from Mumbai in 2009, a couple from the perfume industry landed up at her door and asked her to study perfumery. Within 10 days, boxes of lab materials were sent to her along with information about an established perfumer who could train her. “At that point, I had to choose one — photography or perfumery. Both need their own time, space and dedication. Four years back, I stopped taking up photography assignments. I thought I’ll finish this and go back to photography. But I got submerged in it.”
Creating a fragrance is a creative process. You are given a brief and you choose your materials based on that. The composition can take three weeks to months to a year. “Sometimes, a component can make the perfume smell not so good. Just to eliminate that, it takes 15 days,” she says.
Now functioning out of Goa and often Paris, which is the hub for perfumery and where she gets to smell the latest fragrances, the perfumer started Molabs, an initiative through which she educates and conducts olfactory development projects, conducts research on jasmine and does a few art ventures. She just conducted two workshops for kids (Introduction to smell) and adults in the city. Titled The Invisible You, the session for adults was about how smell influences you consciously and sub-consciously in your decision-making choices. “Sometimes, certain smells are connected to memories of childhood and that has an influence on you. When you smell fresh bread, you end up feeling hungry, even if you’ve just eaten. That’s why malls use this fragrance to increase sales,” she adds. Monika conducts these workshops in Goa and Chennai and plans are on to branch out to other cities.
This time, Monika came back to Chennai after a gap of a year-and-a-half, and felt that the city has changed a lot. She was disappointed at not finding the city she knew. So she went to Mylapore and its little streets to discover the Chennai of yore, and when she bought a muzham of malli , Monika was delighted. “I brought back three bags of malli to my hotel room and it smelt beautiful… and I felt at home,” she smiles.
