It is October. You enter Kannauj, roll down the car window and take a deep breath. Nothing. Then, a few consecutive short sniffs. There is fresh cow dung, sneeze-inducing dust kicked off by vehicles and decomposing garbage. Everything but the heady fragrance that the perfume capital of India promises.

This is partly because it is not the distillation season, says Divy Gupta. “Monsoons leave the water content in flowers too high for oil to be extracted so some distilleries are closed now. The best time is around Holi, from March to June,” says Divy, who, with his brother Shubham, co-founded Raahi Parfums, the sister organisation of the legacy fragrance house Makhulal Ayodhya Prasad, established in 1818.

The cold months allow for another kind of distillation — attars (distilled perfumed oil) with heavy, warm and musky accords like Shamama (made by distilling over 40 spices and roots), Oudh and Henna.

In fact, the absence of the often eulogised fragrant Kannauj air is a testimony to the infallibility of the…