India’s love affair with vetiver

Green Khus ‘Sharbat’, a popular summertime drink in several parts of India. Photo: iStock

In perfumery around the world, vetiver is lauded for its earthy notes and its ability as a fixative. Various interpretations have resulted in fragrances that bring out its cool, sparkling side or the more languid, moody one. Here in India, however, it has a humbler status, but one that is arguably more beloved for the way in which it finds its way into the daily rhythms of life, and has done for centuries. Sanskrit texts such as the Amarakosh, dated to around the sixth century CE, lists aromatics and divides them into sections, such as one concerning herb and forest produce. These were aromatics that were easily available, significant in perfumery, but not in the same league as rare woods and resins. The mark of luxury was conferred only on those scented products that could not be obtained except via long-distance trade and at considerable expense. Such products were exotic and marked out their users as those of superior status. The humble ‘usira’, as vetiver, was referred to in the ancient Sanskrit texts but never made it onto lists of important aromatics since it was local and inexpensive. Nonetheless, it remained an important part of life’s rituals and ayurvedic remedies. Kalidasa, in his play Shakuntala, which dates back to about the fourth century CE, makes mention of an ointment of usira, a substance recommended in ayurveda as a cure for heatstroke or fever. Interestingly, ayurveda also suggested the fragrance of vetiver to help ward off senility.

As the number of aromatics available in ancient India grew, so too did the complexity of perfumes. Where at first perfumes offered to the gods—which was, of course, their original function—were limited to fresh, thornless flowers and incense of aloeswood and guggul, later texts from the eleventh and twelfth centuries mention several more materials, including vetiver, that were being widely used. Offerings to deities were generally kept contemporary in this way.

Much later, the Mughals in their inimitable style began to use vetiver in the ways that still stand today—mats or tatties woven from the roots used as blinds that, when kept damp, could transform even a meagre dry breeze that blew through them to one that was fragrant and blessedly cool. The Imtiaz Mahal, the perfectly proportioned and symmetrical palace of the emperor at the Red Fort, had khus khanas at either end that were meant for summer repose, and would have been screened by these blinds. The mahal also had a teh khana or basement. This, of course, isn’t accessible any longer, but as was pointed out during a guided historical walk of the fort, the large iron rings set above the arches that were used to hang draperies that changed along with the seasons: heavy quilted ones in the winter, vetiver blinds for the summer. A short walk away from the fort, in a crowded lane and across from a large McDonald’s outlet, there is an incongruously large haveli, a glimpse into another time. Haveli Khajanchi, as it is known, is said to have belonged to the royal treasurer, and though it is little more than a ruin now, it retains more than a touch of hauteur and architectural beauty with its delicate arches and grand use of marble. One needs only a bit of imagination to picture it as it would have been, its generous verandas shaded with fragrant khus blinds.

Similarly, sharbat, a Persian invention, made its way to India with the Mughals. The result was khus sharbat made from an extract of vetiver roots, bright green in colour (though this can likely be attributed to added food dye). It tastes like sweet, earthy, grass-green relief on a hot dusty day. Vetiver roots were often layered between woollen blankets and clothes as a moth repellent, but also perhaps to be reminded, in the depths of winter that warmer days would return. And just as vetiver mats were a de facto cooling device in the air-conditionerless homes of the 1970s and 1980s, so were they used, quite ingeniously, by drivers to keep their cars from reaching baking temperatures in the summer sun. Khus mats were tied to the car’s roof, and then wet every so often: an image that appears in perfect sepia tones in my mind.

In South India, vetiver is cultivated in vast plantations as well as smaller ones to provide farmers a little extra income. It is steam-distilled in huge boilers, and the essential oil makes its way into fine fragrances worldwide, including a few famous ones like Guerlain’s Vetiver. The red-gold oil smells earthy, with notes of warm, sweet hay. It has a fine, elegant scent that lingers on the skin for long hours, becoming warmer and mellower as it settles in. Interestingly, it is always referred to very correctly as vetiver oil, distinguishable from the well-loved and familiar khus that grows unmonitored in the plains of North India. But it was this latter vetiver that I was curious to see harvested and distilled, and also eager to smell.

Excerpted with permission from The Perfume Project: Journeys through Indian fragrance by Divrina Dhingra. @2023Westland