Words & Photography: Margaret Jones, Mohit Sharma // Tamilnadu Tourism
It began on a quiet summer evening in Tamil Nadu, in the courtyard of a small family home painted in shades of fading ochre. The sun was dipping low, spilling liquid gold over the tiled roof, when I caught the first whisper of it — sweet, heady, almost intoxicating. Jasmine.
Not the perfumed version that comes in bottles, but the real thing: freshly plucked, still warm from the sun, its petals cool against my palm. The air around me seemed to shift, as if time had slowed to make room for this scent.
“Each knot is a prayer,” she said, smiling without looking up. “You breathe in the flower, and it stays with you — not just here” — she touched her nose — “but here,” and tapped her chest.
The next morning, I met Babbu, my driver. Courteous, attentive, and always smiling, he seemed to anticipate what I needed before I asked. Every day, without fail, he placed a fresh jasmine garland on the rear-view mirror. The moment I stepped into the car, the air filled with that familiar, velvety sweetness.
Later, he drove me to Madurai’s flower market at dawn. Crates of jasmine spilled onto the pavement, their pearly buds like beads waiting to be threaded. Women, sari pallus tucked neatly at their waists, worked with practised grace, their fingers moving as swiftly as their voices. The scent hung over everything — both delicate and insistent.
In the evenings, the fragrance changed. Night-blooming jasmine drifted in with the cool air, softer and more elusive, as if it preferred to stay in the shadows. Sitting under a neem tree, I thought of the women I’d met: brides with thick coils of jasmine on their wedding day; widows wearing a single strand for the market; little girls learning their mothers’ knots with clumsy fingers.
Some scents are fleeting, gone in hours. But jasmine, I realised, was different. It stitched itself into memory — into the folds of a sari, the pages of a travel journal, the hum of an engine carrying you through Tamil Nadu with Babbu’s garland swaying gently at the front of the car.
Even now, far from that ochre courtyard, I can close my eyes and smell it: the heady sweetness of petals at dusk, the mingling of incense and temple bells, the laughter of women weaving garlands, and the quiet devotion of a driver who began every journey with a flower.
That’s when I understood — I hadn’t just fallen in love with the scent of jasmine. I had fallen in love with the life that bloomed around it.
It was still dark when Madurai began to stir. Somewhere between the first temple bell and the gentle sweep of brooms across stone streets, a fragrance floated through the air—soft, sweet, and impossibly delicate. It came in waves, mingling with the scent of wet earth from the previous night’s rain. I followed it like a thread, winding my way past sleepy tea stalls and small shrines where flickering oil lamps kept the night at bay.
The source was easy to find. Outside the Meenakshi Amman Temple, women sat cross-legged, their hands moving with the rhythm of memory, stringing together buds of jasmine as if they were beading pearls. Each bud was still closed, wrapped in the mystery of the morning. “They’ll bloom fully later,” one woman said, smiling, “so the scent will last all day.”
“He gave away his chariot so a jasmine creeper could climb and touch the sun.”
It struck me then—Madurai has always known the value of beauty, of giving space for something delicate to grow.
Planning a journey here means letting the senses lead. Mornings for temple visits and market wanderings; afternoons for exploring silk weavers’ colonies or sipping strong filter coffee in old cafés; evenings for watching the city glow in golden light from the temple towers. And always, the jasmine—its fragrance will follow you through every street, every conversation, every moment.
For travellers with Immerse India, we weave this experience into a day that begins with dawn prayers at the Meenakshi Temple, moves through the bustling flower markets, and ends with a private dinner under a canopy of jasmine strings, the air heavy with their perfume. Somewhere between the first strand and the last garland, you too might fall in love with Madurai.
If you are planning your jasmine immersion in Madurai, always;
Words & Photography: Mohit Sharma
Additional Photography: Amanda. F
Copyright belongs to the authors. All rights reserved.
