Jasmine Memories

Khush Raho with Sangeeta 

The current heat wave has been pulling me back, across many decades, to summers in Delhi. And one memory keeps returning with particular sweetness. On weekends, as a special treat, we would be taken to India Gate, that beautiful promenade of gardens down from Raisina Hill. For a child, it was a magical paradise. Tens of ice cream vendors, balloon sellers with their long bamboo poles held high, exotic balloons in every colour and shape bobbing against the Delhi sky. And everywhere, the jasmine sellers. I would wear a string of fresh jasmine on my wrist all the way home, and at night place it on my pillow and doze off to that extraordinary aroma.

The sleep must have been something special, because all after all these years, that memory lives in me as a most beautiful one of my childhood.  Last night, my jasmine bush had a few blooms looking like bits of cool moonlight dropped to the earth. I inhaled the divine magical aroma slowly and deeply, again, and again. As an aromatherapist, I now have multiple layers of understanding to that experience. Andv, I have come to appreciate, is a truly extraordinary flower. 

Here is what makes it unique. In summer, most flowers do their work in daylight; the crazy- pink bougainvillea, fiery Gulmohar, golden yellow Amaltas and Marigold: such extravagant colours. These plants are essentially flaunting and advertising themselves like giant billboards. The brighter the sun, the brighter the bloom, all in service of attracting bees and pollinators from miles away. 

Jasmine plays an entirely different game. It conserves its energy through the day, channelling it instead into producing one of the most potent aromas in the plant world released at night, to attract night moths for pollination. No bright colours needed. Just that white moon glow and the singular, intoxicating scent that makes you pull the flower close and keep inhaling. 

This quiet, concentrated power is exactly what makes jasmine so prized in the world of essential oils. Jasmine essential oil is among the most expensive and sought after; used for centuries in healing traditions and by master perfumers, particularly the French, who have long regarded it as liquid gold. 

A word of caution here: if you are purchasing jasmine essential oil, please be careful. True jasmine essential oil costs hundreds of thousands of rupees per litre. If you find it cheaply, what you are almost certainly holding is a synthetic fragrance, pleasant perhaps, but without any of the therapeutic potency of the real thing. 

For physical, emotional and mental healing, the pure essential oil is what an aromatherapist would work with. But here is something simple and beautiful you can do right now, in this heat, for free: find a jasmine plant, in your garden, on a neighbour’s fence, in a park and simply inhale. A few slow, deep breaths of fresh jasmine is its own quiet medicine. Our ancestors knew this. They wove jasmine into daily life -- into hair, into garlands, into prayers. Perhaps this heat wave is simply an invitation to remember. 

(Sangeeta Bhalla is an Energy Healer, Instructor, and Therapeutic Aromatherapist. She can be reached at www.sangeetabhalla.net)