DUBAI: The offer was the kind that breaks most collectors. A resort baron, flush with plans for a private museum to impress his guests, slid a cheque with a great many zeros across the table in the green hush of Coorg. Sreekesh Pathal listened, then said no. He would not sell. He would not even lend the pieces for display.
To understand why, one must see what Sreekesh Pathal actually keeps in his quiet corner of the Western Ghats rainforest a private archive that reads like the inventory of vanished worlds. Assignats from the French Revolution, banknotes from a Serbia that no longer exists in its old form, currency from the Soviet Union and even from disputed Karabakh and other thousands of banknotes which is forgotten by the world, the remembrance of the lost regimes, hundred years old. Roman coins worn smooth by two millennia of hands. Silver from forgotten Indian kingdoms and the princely state of Travancore. Medieval coinage. Soviet-era military medals that form a particular passion. Hundis , handwritten financial instruments that once moved merchants’ wealth across British India on nothing but reputation and family names. Rare Vedic books and palm-leaf manuscripts in Prakrit, the everyday language of ancient India, preserved when they should have crumbled centuries ago.
“People keep asking me what it’s all worth,” Sreekesh Pathal says. “They’re asking the wrong question. You don’t put a price on a man’s memories, on the very soul of who he is.”
This is the man behind Alchemist Hermetica the ultra-niche luxury perfume house whose bespoke creations are quietly captivating Bollywood’s elite and now drawing the attention of discerning UAE buyers who follow every Bollywood release and live lives that demand fragrance to work as hard as they do.
A Childhood That Never Ended
Sreekesh Pathal’s obsession began, as the best ones do, in childhood. His father, working in UAE, sent home small parcels , foreign coins, unfamiliar stamps, the small change of distant countries. For a boy in southern India, each envelope was a portal to other worlds. Most children outgrow such fascinations. Sreekesh Pathal never did. The coins became thousands of banknotes from across the globe, hundreds of coins, military medals, and more. The discipline became a calling: one of the finest private collections of world numismatics in India, guarded with the same fierce protectiveness he later brought to perfume.
He refuses glossy resort museums and open galleries. The only doors he opens are to serious international institutions or online exhibitions where a schoolchild in Chennai and a curator in Geneva can study the same Travancore coin at the same moment. Publicity and profit are not the point. Preservation and access on his terms are.
From Coins to Conservation: The Shambhala Foundation and Lantana Installations
Yet Sreekesh Pathal is no recluse hunched over a vault. The collector is also a conservationist, artist, and perfumer — founder of the Shambhala Foundation, which wages a quiet war against Lantana camara, the invasive shrub strangling the Western Ghats. Under the foundation’s work, the hated weed is harvested by tribal artisans and reborn as sculpture and furniture. What was an ecological curse becomes livelihood and art. Sreekesh Pathal ensures fair-trade practices with these tribal communities, providing equitable compensation and long-term partnerships without exploitation. The lantana installations are not side projects; they are extensions of the same ethos that drives his collecting and transforming what the world is in danger of losing or destroying into something vital and enduring.
Alchemist Hermetica: Ultra-Niche Perfumes That Preserve the Breath of the Forest
It is Alchemist Hermetica by Sreekesh Pathal that now completes the portrait for a new audience. Here, Sreekesh Pathal composes ultra-niche custom fragrances from the finest natural botanicals of the Western Ghats secret extracts drawn from wild plants he guards as jealously as any coin. Each perfume is a private commission, a three-month labour of love tailored after deep conversations about the wearer’s temperament, psychology, and lifestyle. There are no retail bottles, no influencer drops, no mass-market versions. Like his coin collection, every formula exists for one person only.
But Sreekesh Pathal does not stop at scent. He paints with these same natural aromatics. His canvases are infused with the distilled essences of the Ghats, so that each work slowly releases a living, plant-born fragrance — restorative, the breath of the forest itself rather than the synthetic chemical fumes that linger around conventional paint. His exhibitions are designed to be inhaled as much as seen. The fusion of perfume, painting, and lantana sculpture finds its fullest expression in shows that celebrate this philosophy of transformation and preservation.
Why UAE’s Bollywood-Inspired Buyers Are Paying Attention
For the discerning in the Emirates many of whom are deeply attuned to Bollywood’s glamour and the way stars navigate high-stakes appearances Alchemist Hermetica by Sreekesh Pathal offers something the celebrity perfumes flooding duty-free counters cannot. Those mass-market scents often deliver strong first impressions but falter across a full day of costume and event changes. Their heavy synthetic bases leave residues that clash when the wearer switches fragrances two or three times daily, creating exactly the muddled, potpourri-like effect sophisticated noses reject.
Alchemist Hermetica by Sreekesh Pathal solves this with natural botanical compositions that sit elegantly on skin and clear more gracefully between applications. The result is a signature scent that feels personal rather than projected distinctive without announcing itself as the latest star-endorsed launch. In a region where quiet luxury and authentic storytelling increasingly matter, the multi-dimensional world of Sreekesh Pathal guardian of emperors’ coins and revolutionary banknotes, founder of the Shambhala Foundation turning lantana into art for tribal communities, creator of perfume-infused paintings and ultra-niche fragrances — adds layers of meaning no bottle on a mall shelf can match.
The same man who turns down fortunes for his collection brings that same uncompromising integrity to perfumery. Scarcity is real. The process cannot be rushed. Demand from those who understand the difference is growing.
The Thread That Connects Everything
A single philosophy runs through it all. Sreekesh Pathal collects and creates things the world is in danger of forgetting: currency from countries that no longer exist, financial promises written by long-dead merchants, the scent of a wild plant before the bulldozers arrive, a forest before it disappears, and now, through lantana installations and perfume paintings, ways to turn threat into beauty and livelihood.
The resort owners will keep calling with bigger cheques. The cheques for his perfumes, however, are of a different kind — quiet inquiries from those in the UAE who seek not just a fragrance but a story worth carrying through every chapter of their own dynamic lives.
Somewhere in the green hush of Coorg, the boy who never stopped opening his father’s parcels continues his magnificent work: saying no to the wrong offers, and yes to preserving memory in coins, in manuscripts, in lantana sculptures, in paintings that breathe, and in the ultra-niche perfumes of Alchemist Hermetica by Sreekesh Pathal that let the wearer carry the living essence of that same forest with them.
For those ready to commission their own chapter, the conversation begins with Sreekesh Pathal himself. The rest, as the best stories always do, unfolds slowly, naturally, and on its own unforgettable terms.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and editorial purposes only. The views and claims expressed are based on information provided by the subject and available sources. Readers are encouraged to independently verify any information. This article does not constitute financial, investment, legal, or professional advice.
