Mysore Incense
Walking up the street through the Devaraja Market in Mysore, a man started talking to me. He started with the question I get constantly: “where are you from”? Most times, the conversation ends with, “I am from the U.S.” and a response of, “ah, America”. This guy continued talking and described the three products for which Mysore is famous: silk, sandalwood, and incense. He was obviously a tout. I have mixed feelings about these guys. On one hand, I know that a tout's goal is to somehow sell me on something - something I most probably had not hand a mind to buy. There is also the chance, which I believe to be very small, of something more sinister. On the other hand, interacting with these people is part of the experience here and it does provide the opportunity to see things off of the main roads.
In this case, It provided us the opportunity to watch a woman making sticks of incense by hand at a home sized incense factory. In a bucket, she created a dark grey paste with water and dark colored flour like powder. She plucked the stiff paste from the bucket and flung it onto a board in front of her. She then took a stick, which was cut from bamboo and with one hand rolled the stick in quick back and forth motion through the paste. In a about four rolling motions, the rolled the bamboo out of the paste and it was now coated in the incense paste. Next, she would lay out the sticks on the front stoop to dry in the sun for several hours. The incense sticks don't have any scent to them at this point. They have to be infused with oils that grant them their scent and color. We saw the bottled oils in the back which included cinnamon, champa which was a honey smell, lotus, jasmine, and others.
The point here for them was for us to purchase sticks of incense. The owner of this place invited me to sit down (which I declined), mentioned several times how his products were exported to the United States and sold at The Body Shop, and thrust into my hands a handbill describing the different scented oils they used. I politely and firmly refused, the owner made a polite good bye, and we left.
Before going to the incense factory, the tout also led us through what he described as the old city market where people sold piles of spices, fruits, and other foods. I towered over the locals that were here and had to duck constantly to pass under the tarps hung everywhere at my chin level. Jodi said afterwards that the market was the type of place Anthony Bourdain would go through (albeit with his camera crew of 10 people and a fixer he trusts).
This was a Mysore highlight for me and was part of what turned out to be an exhausting day in the sun. I did too much walking and it caught up with me. I rode the train back to Bangalore with a splitting headache and slight nausea, while Jodi suffered no ill effects. I still feel tired today and am glad we don't have any running around planned.