hyderabad it might be inconceivable to even imagine something like this now but at the turn of the last century a gujarati hindu businessman puran das used to run his humble establishment within the premises of the mecca masjid near charminar peacefully the shop was purandas perfumers and the reason he shifted out of that place was not because muslims wanted him to do so but because musi forced him tothe mecca masjid was flooded in during the great musi flood in 1908 and the shop was destroyed my great grandfather shifted to gulzar houz where the business continued to thrive for nearly 70 years and eventually my father surendra prasad grandson of puran das and son of ranchhoddas shifted to pathergatti in 1975 and set up the new shop called hyderabad perfumers says shailendra a member of the fourth generation who runs the shop along with his younger brother sudesh advt shailendra a man of mild manners who can speak impeccable urdu says his great grandfather migrated from burhanpur in madhya pradesh to hyderabad in 1896 in hope of a better livelihood he started with manufacturing hair oil he would carry a basket on his head and walk around the charminar area coaxing people to give his products a try the business ticked because of the quality of his products and like any astute businessman he started diversifying to scale up his enterprisethose days the nawabs and nizams used to chew tobacco a habit which was synonymous with the nawabi lifestyle so we started manufacturing chewing tobacco and gradually also forayed into distillation of essential oils by 1930s we had established a good name in all the three business he says with time the essential oils business became unsustainable due to high costs and changing customer preferences and led to the family moving into perfumes business and incense sticksshailendra explains that today the perfume business is more about the art of blending that the men in the family have perfected over a period of time they procure raw materials from all over the countryand like the fragrance of its perfumes the connoisseurs of hyderabad perfumers too are spread all over the world we have a customer who visits us from italy every six months and buys perfumes worth lakhs and then sells it there we even have a chinese customer he says with joyand the reason that people from far and wide visit his shop to buy perfumes is because the shop unlike many of its peers does not charges different prices to its local and foreign buyers and has been offering quality products consistently he claims advt as one enters the shop one cant help but notice the two boards that hang right on the front wall of the shop both together sport an urdu couplet hindu hoo bahut door hoo islam se lekin mujhko bhi mohammed ki shafa par yakin hai read the boardssudesh kumar younger brother of shailendra says their father read this couplet somewhere