Meet Delhi’s oldest perfumers
Live MintIt’s a 205-year-old perfume house but when you step into either of the two shops of the legendary Gulabsingh Johrimal in Old Delhi, it could be just another dusty old store. Then Mukul, 50, his seemingly more outgoing brother, points to a glass shelf with tall, luxuriously shaped-and-cut glass attar decanters, saying they have been around since perhaps his grandfather’s times. The unassuming stores—their wholesale headquarters is in Dariba Kalan, known for its silver jewellery, and the retail shop is a seven-minute walk away, on the main Chandni Chowk road—belie Gulabsingh Johrimal’s heritage as one of the repositories of India’s olfactory culture since the time of the Mughals. Their father, Ram Singh, first started exporting scents but perhaps even more importantly, the perfume house has been retailing attars across the country through India Post’s “VPP”, or Value Payable Post, service for over 30 years.
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