“Oh boy. This one is something. Where Jungle Kinam and Kyara Koko 92 feel like soft second skins, meant for me only; Olde Hind is theatrical.
Mouth watering street food. Roaring festivities. A spray of colours - blue, gold, orange, green - just splashing all over a canvas. It’s so so big!
I sprayed this on at around 7PM last night, and early this morning, the wafts were still going. And unlike high street fragrances where that can get nauseating, this felt rewarding.
It was like going to bed after having attended a feast of traditional Indian food, and waking up to more spices being ground, with their aroma permeating the air. Takes me right back to weekends at my Grandmother’s house, a highlight of my childhood.
She’d be up at the crack of dawn for her prayers, and always used sandalwood oil to polish her idols. Shortly after, the breakfast prep would start.
Masala omelettes would sizzle on the pan, with the aroma of fenugreek, cumin and coriander enveloping everyone who entered the kitchen. We’d all participate by boiling tea, buttering the toast and shepherding it all into the dining room.
There, as a palette cleanser for the soul, she would burn a rose incense that no one knows the origin of, but everyone to this day is still yearning for.
All of this accompanied by classical music that only our Grandmother would play, since the cassette was jammed in the stereo. And that’s how Sundays were. Full of life, full of systematic chaos, and tradition.
So it’s fitting that a fragrance called Olde Hind evokes these memories. Thanks to Ensar and the team for reimagining what I didn’t think as an adult, I’d ever smell again. To memories.”
“This is one of the relatively few "challenging" profiles offered by Ensar, which explains why it hasn't sold out as fast as some of the other offerings in EO Heritage. It has a medicinal sweetness with the herbs, which smells exactly like body odour, but once those notes have a chance to fade the buttery sandalwood and the earthy coolness of the musk surface along with the spiced Hindi oud notes. It's not for me, and I can't imagine anyone really wanting to smell exactly like this, but it's well-executed and a good reference standard for an aromatic oud perfume.”
