It’s a warm March day, we are being ferried across the ghats of Benaras in a Bajra (a big wooden boat). White mattresses, like the ones you sit on to buy handloom weaves, in small towns from gaddedars (sari merchants) are lovingly decorated with petals and we are greeted with rose water; the boat is lined with jasmine buds and Chaiti roses-the star of this morning. Chaiti is a local variety of a deep red-almost violet-hued rose that grows only for a month every year. The state’s unique topography affects this Indian rose into having a profound fragrance -reminiscent of tea or freshly cut grass. It is not a heady scent, but rather a permeable one. Imagine sitting in a garden, where a gentle breeze keeps blowing over your rose plant to cast a wispy, mysterious fragrance in the air.
