Khitoli
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Rose essence
Mar 29 2015
Poop to perfume: The rose crop of Khitoli
Eram Agha
At Khitoli village, Hasayn, Hathras district, mid-March is when the process for extracting rose essence (ruh) begins. The process will go on till the end of April, over a period of 40 days. There is a big rose mandi here. Ask farmers what the secret of the rich aroma of the roses of this region is, and the answer is unanimous -human poop. The rose of this region is called “Noorjehan“ -jewel of the world -after the wife of Mughal emperor Jahangir. The air in the village at this time year is laden with the aroma of roses.
Workers are seen plucking roses early in the morning, while dewdrops are still on the buds. They measure the roses, add bunches of them into water to steam in a large copper container called “degh“ to extract ruh. About 250 kg of flowers yield just 40 gm of ruh.
“The good yield of the rose is because of fertile land -and if you are thinking what makes the soil here especially fertile, it is human poop,“ says Mahesh Pal Singh, former pradhan of the village whose father Veer Pal Singh started the work of rose essence extraction some 65 years ago in Khatoli.
“The farmer is also a scientist,“ Singh says.“He knows what is good, what is not. Most of us avoid cow dung and prefer human poop in our fields as manure. Almost 95% of our villagers don't have toilets at home. All the men, women and children answer the call of nature in the fields. That is why the produce in the village is far better than what is grown in farms away from human habitation.“
One cannot then help wonder if toilets in village homes is at all a good idea then, in this part of Hathras. “The toilets are only part of the big houses here. Just about five homes here have toilets. That is what is best, not just for the rose crop, but also for potatoes. We need bijli (electricity) and sadak (roads) rather more urgently than toilets,“ farmer Bahadur Singh says.
“And what when every house has a toilet?“ “There will be no roses then,“ the farmer says, with quiet conviction. The essence extracted from the rose is later used in tobacco, perfume and soap manufacturing. Horticulture officer Kaushal Kumar of Aligarh says, “Yes, there is truth to the belief that human excrement is good manure. But for the sake of hygiene, it should first be treated well.“
