It took only one sniff to transport me and my editor, Raj, back to childhood — and while we grew up in different places and times, certain scents are so integrally tied to South Asian culture that nostalgia hit hard.
We were at Passerine, a new Indian restaurant in lower Manhattan, at a beauty event hosted by skincare brand Ranavat. There, we applied a few drops of a new product, their Brightening Saffron Essence, to the backs of our hands. As we inhaled the saffron and rose oil aroma that wafted through the room, we looked at each other and said, in sitcomesque simultaneity, “This smells like home.”
What we experienced was something known as the Proust effect — a phenomenon by which smells can evoke familiar, even nostalgic memories. For us, like so many other blended-identity brown Americans, these memories include wellness and grooming rituals: herbal face masks and having our scalps (sometimes vigorously) massaged with hair oil. I remembered my grandmother rubbing my arms with lotion from a nondescript bottle as a kid. I never knew what it was, but I could detect the distinct scents of ayurvedic-inspired products anywhere. Ranavat’s essence brought the two of us back right back to a place of feeling cared for, specifically by our women ancestors.
While the Proust effect meant that Raj and I felt like we were floating with joy and feeling seen (smelled?), our conversation afterward unearthed complicated feelings. Smell, for many South Asian folks in the diaspora, is a sensitive topic. Raj and I were born in different generations — she is a millennial, I am Gen Z — but we both grew up with the narrative that Indians smell like curry or Amla oil, among other “undesirable” scents.
To see Ranavat embrace smell — to be clear, all of the products invoke a mithai-like melange of notes — as their defining factor was healing for our inner children and really a defiant reclamation of that stigma. These scents are indisputably beautiful, and they’re also part of our fabric.
And while we love the recognition that Ranavat has been getting, I’m not looking for Western validation of traditions that have persisted for centuries. Saffron, the primary fixture of Ranavat’s skincare, has a storied history in Ayurveda, a system of whole-body medicine and healing that arrived in India around 500 B.C. by way of Persia. It’s this cultural wellness thread — and founder Michelle Ranavat’s experience growing up drinking her mother’s kesar doodh — that the brand infuses into its products. Instead, I’m looking to rediscover and reclaim some of these beauty staples and find comfort in knowing that the culture-bearers behind the products are South Asian American.
Turmeric, which is what actually gives various Indian dishes their golden yellow hue, is another Indian staple that has also been co-opted by the Western wellness industrial complex. While it’s a beast to get out of white fabric or surfaces (and brazenly stains white nail polish, as I learned early in life), many swear by its purportedly healing properties, which lie in its main compound, curmumin. And like saffron, it’s believed to have anti-inflammatory properties, which are ideal for healing and evening skin. In fact, it’s used by several South Asian-owned beauty brands, including Aavrani as a main ingredient in their mask product.
It’s important to also note that Ayurvedic treatments have been co-opted by the West to market “cures” instead of the original intention, which is prevention and overall maintenance of your internal and external health. And that’s precisely how Ranavat is bringing authenticity to her products: They’re promised to enhance and comfort rather than transform your face.
Hair oil is another Ayurvedic practice that has spanned centuries and generations of South Asian home rituals that has recently been picked up by the West and made all the rounds on TikTok. Like being told we smelled, many of us also dealt with leering classmates when we’d come to school with oiled hair slicked into a braid. And while we’re grateful that the script has finally flipped and IRL bullying because someone is different is less prevalent at middle schools, it’s important to acknowledge the roots of the practice.
Regardless of the efficacy of hair oiling, it’s a cherished ritual in our culture. Early mentions of hair oiling date back to 1st century C.E. in the Charaka Samhita, a foundational Ayurvedic text, and it’s believed to balance the body’s “chakras,” or energies, and promote blood circulation and better sleep. In fact, “sneha” is the Sanskrit word that means “to oil,” and it’s also the word that means “to love.” It’s evident why: Just look to the therapeutic practice of our mothers massaging hair oil into our scalps as kids each week. The very practice is rooted in nurture and revitalization, and it’s often punctuated by our mothers or grandmothers telling us an unsolicited story or two from their own childhoods.
South Asian-owned brands such as Sahajan have anchored their products in the practice; the brand’s best-selling hair oil, for one, has both amla and coconut oils, both of which are brown-mother favorites and invoke those memories among South Asians. And while these oils are widely available individually, this thoughtful amalgamation mimics the mixtures that were drizzled onto many of our scalps as children.
To see these products on shelves at Sephora and touted by South Asian beauty influencers is a huge point of pride. Above all, it’s a feat for South Asian women to be wholly recognized for developing great products while staying true to and respecting their cultural roots. And so, I’m leaning into the nostalgia and revisiting so many of our beauty staples through a new lens — and I can finally do it because of women founders who reclaimed their roots, too.
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