It is easy to give up when troubles show up. It is easy to convince yourself that this is too hard and turn around.
I am no stranger to those feelings and making those decisions. But today I am not going to dwell on those memories. Today, I want to share the story of what finally kept me going. The story of why this brand was born -
When my mother passed away suddenly, I not only lost a parent but also the center of my world, a best friend, and the feeling of having an emotional safety net. This was also the time when I realized her value in my life and felt truly grateful for all the love she had given me. I've been lucky to get through this time with so much support from my family and friends, yet only those who had also lost their parents and mothers in particular, seem to have a better understanding of what I was going through.
I had always wondered if the world would look different from someone else's eyes or sound different from someone else's ears but this time I knew that the world must feel and be perceived differently by each one depending on their personal experiences, cultural references, and individual tendencies. Even with all the empathy in your heart, if you've never experienced a headache, you can't really understand someone else's pain. But even if you have suffered, what you will understand would be based on your own suffering. In a true sense, we can only understand our own experiences and perspective. Yet, some common experiences bind us together. Becoming a parent suddenly makes you see every other parent at the park as a friend. People speaking the same language and growing up in the same country get excited about bumping into each other on foreign lands even if they don't know each other.
This realization has served as my core inspiration throughout the whole process.
I inherited the love for fragrances from her - my mum. She never splurged on beauty items much and wore no make-up on most days but she loved her sarees and fragrances. Although in our small town options were limited, she always had her bottles of locally sourced sandalwood and jasmine perfumes. We also kept a stick of sandalwood in our temple like most Brahmin families and it was used on special days to make a thin paste with water by rubbing it on a rough stone and applying it as tikka on the forehead.
After I started working, I bought her a perfume from my own salary - my first gift to her - a perfume I had hunted for since I saw it's ad in surreal colours and fell in love with that visual - a perfume that smelled just like those colours when I finally found it in Mumbai - Beyond Paradise by EL. It instantly became her favourite scent. She wore it for years but mostly on special occasions or whenever she missed me. It was too precious for her to wear on daily basis. When she passed away, I found that half-full bottle in her cupboard kept inside a locked drawer with her most precious jewellery. Of course, now that bottle is part of my treasure.
That was my first gift to her and as if it was destiny, I was planning to get her a bottle of Tonka 25 for her next birthday before her sudden demise.
To honour her memory and that promise made to myself, I went to the store (MECCA) to buy a bottle of that perfume but ended up finding it too painful to wear myself. Instead, I picked up a bottle of By the fireplace because it somewhat felt relatable to what I was feeling.
Not quite finding a conclusion to my quest and also feeling very intrigued by the world of niche fragrances, I started learning more about it. Thought it was a phase and would end soon, I indulged in watching reviews, reading articles, and ended up bumping into a story about how a brand was started. This was my light-bulb moment. For the first time, I was free from the prejudice that one has to be a perfumer to start a fragrance brand. The more I thought about it, the more it felt like the journey I was searching for. Rest is a boring story of searching, struggling, and sorting things out. In the end though, I am glad for not giving up and finally reaching the end of that tunnel and being able to share this sentiment in form of a scent.
So, while cozy, comforting and spicy vanilla is how one would describe LOST WONDERER, it is also a voyage in appreciating loved ones and finding beauty in the process of grief.
There isn't any lack of options or creativity in the fragrance market. This is just about me telling a story as a personal expression and creating a product that others can experience in their own way and find their own interpretations of it. Very much like abstract visual art where everyone sees the same thing but experiences and understands it differently.
We aim to create scents and products that are unique yet relatable enough to become a part of daily rituals in many lives.
