He went looking for a perfume that would help him pray. Ten years later he is still trying to smell his way back to one night at Prambanan, when the incense he lit himself was taken off the air by rain.
No. 44
Interview by HoM Haute · Words by Halim Widyawardhana
Tap the underlined phrases. Six things on this page can be handled.
There is a particular job at the Sendratari Ramayana that nobody in the audience thinks about. Someone has to make the smoke. Ten years ago at Prambanan that someone was Halim Widyawardhana, backstage with the charcoal and the costumes, waiting for the cue that kills Rahwana. He lit it, the stage narrowed, four thousand people went silent, and then the sky opened. The rain came down over the open-air theatre and took the whole smell away, incense, jasmine, batik, hot stone, replaced in a few seconds by wet earth. He has been chasing that sequence ever since. He is a civil servant in Bengkulu now, a father of two, in the middle of a second master’s degree, running most mornings because a blood test told him to. He collects keris. He wears something fresh before work and Jayandaru in the afternoon. And he would like, please, for someone to put that night in a bottle.
The file
Based in
Bengkulu City
Does
Civil servant. Currently taking a second master’s at Universitas Bengkulu.
At home
Two sons. The reason for the running.
Collects
Fragrance, Tosan Aji, running gear. In that order on a good month.
Morning
Rayhaan Aquatica. Fresh, light, out the door.
Afternoon
HoM Haute Jayandaru Asterism Heure. He says it puts him back inside the kraton at Yogya and Solo.
Wants next
A perfume built from the Sendratari Ramayana. After that, Wayang Kulit.
The soundtrack
He sent one song, and it is the show itself: Lestari, in the version sung at the Ramayana ballet at Prambanan.
The background
I am a father of two. I started doing physical exercise seriously after a test came back with high cholesterol and high uric acid. I want to keep my body healthy, and I am hoping both of my sons will live a healthy life as they grow up. Right now I work as a civil servant in Bengkulu while taking my second master’s degree at the University of Bengkulu.
Besides sniffing fragrances, I collect Indonesian Tosan Aji and running equipment.
Handle this · 01
Reading a blade
Halim keeps old iron. A keris is not really a weapon, it is a document: forged, folded, named, bathed once a year and oiled. Tap a part and it will tell you what it is for.
the crosspiece
Ganja
Forged from the same billet as the blade, then fitted back onto it so tightly that the seam should be invisible. A collector checks the join before anything else. On a good keris you cannot find it with a fingernail.
In perfume: the moment two accords stop being two.
Why it is hereA keris is maintained on a calendar, not on a whim, and the maintenance has a smell. That is close to how Halim wears fragrance, and close to how this house thinks about a bottle.
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01
How would you describe your relationship with fragrance?
Fragrance is something I cannot live without. It all began when I was looking for a perfume for my daily prayer at the mosque, just to make me focus more on the prayer. As time passed I began to collect different types of fragrance at home. Now sniffing fragrance has become my hobby, besides collecting Indonesian Tosan Aji and collecting running equipment.
It began when I was looking for a perfume for my daily prayer, just to make me focus more.
The Ramayana, indoors. Gold on gold, and a painted forest behind.
02
A scent that takes you somewhere. A memory, a place, a person.
There is a scent that I want to smell once more. It was ten years ago, when I went to the Sendratari Ramayana as a committee member, where I took part in preparing the costumes for the dancers and burning the charcoal as a medium to light the incense for the ceremony of Rahwana’s death.
During that show I could smell white florals, probably a mixture of jasmine and tuberose, in the opening, and the smell of the kain batik worn by the dancers. I could also smell the woody and cold scent of the stage itself, standing so near the Prambanan temple. As I lit the incense and entered the backstage during Rahwana’s death, the stage became focused while the crowd stayed silent. Not long after that the rain began to fall, making the scent of the earth rise to my nose, washing the death scent of Rahwana away.
Handle this · 02
Lighting the charcoal
This was Halim’s actual job that night. Incense is not a flame, it is a temperature, and the whole craft is holding one. Choose a resin, then press and hold to fan the coals. Push too far and you will burn it.
24
degrees celsius at the coal
Benzoin wants 150 to 210
Cold. All you can smell is the charcoal itself, and a little of the shell it was made from.
What you just learnedResins do not burn, they soften and sublime. Benzoin gives up its vanilla and balsam early, frankincense needs more heat before the lemon in it turns to church, agarwood needs more again. Past roughly three hundred degrees the resin stops evaporating and starts combusting, and the smell goes flat and acrid. Every censer in every religion is a machine for not going that far.
Open air, Prambanan. Gamelan on both sides, the temple behind, and nothing at all between the stage and the weather.
03
What are you wearing these days, and why?
This morning I am wearing Rayhaan Aquatica, since I love to wear something fresh and light in the morning. In the afternoon I wear HoM Haute’s Jayandaru, and yes, I love this scent, which reminds me of my visit to the kraton in Yogya and in Solo. I am hoping HoM Haute will release a perfume based on my experience at the Sendratari Ramayana, since it has something similar to Jayandaru.
Handle this · 03
Walking into a kraton
A Javanese court is not a building, it is a sequence of thresholds laid out north to south, and each one takes something off you before it lets you further in. Walk it and read what the air is doing at every gate.
The north square
Alun-alun Lor
Two old banyan trees in the middle, fenced. Anyone at all may stand here. This is still the city, and the city knows it.
The air: dust, kretek smoke, something frying, tarmac that has been hot all day.
Threshold 1 of 7
What you just learnedThe plan is concentric and the smell concentrates with it. Out at the alun-alun the air belongs to everybody. By the kedhaton it is being made on purpose, daily, by people whose job that is. Halim says Jayandaru puts him back inside that inner ground, which is a fair description of what the perfume is trying to do.
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04
A small daily ritual that matters to you.
Wearing a calming fragrance at night, before bed, wishing for a good dream.
Handle this · 04
Five parts per trillion
The rain at Prambanan did not add a smell so much as replace one, and the molecule that did it is almost absurdly easy for a human nose to find. Dilute the air ten times, again and again, and watch what drops out and what refuses to.
100 ppm
concentration in the air
Still thereEverything is still audible at this strength. Keep going.
Not long after that the rain began to fall, and the scent of the earth came up and washed the death of Rahwana away.
Halim · Issue 44
05
What does good taste mean to you?
Good taste is being able to enjoy life without disturbance from toxic people. In fragrance, good taste is a perfume that can make me travel back to the days I do not want to forget.
Handle this · 05
Two tunings, no standard pitch
The gamelan at Prambanan is tuned to itself and to nothing else. There is no concert A in Java. Switch between the two systems, tap the keys, then let the phrase play.
Slendro
Five tones to the octave, spaced almost evenly. Open, calm, a little floating. Most of the older repertoire lives here.
What you just learnedTwo gamelan sets tuned by two different smiths will not agree with each other, and nobody considers that a fault. Instruments from one set are simply never mixed with another. A set is tuned to its own ear. Perfume has the same argument inside it: a house can tune to a chart, or it can tune to itself and accept that not everyone will be able to play along.
06
One belief you would defend.
Remember the purpose of life, and the reason this world was created.
Handle this · 06
The lamp, and which side you sit on
Halim would like a perfume built from Wayang Kulit. So here is the thing the puppets are actually for. Drag the lamp. The figure does not move at all.
You are sitting on the shadow side, where the audience sits
What you just learnedThe blencong, the oil lamp, is the only light in the room, and its flame is never still, which is exactly why the shadow looks alive. Traditionally the audience sits on the shadow side and never sees the puppets at all, while the dalang, the gamelan and anyone who wants to watch the craft sit behind. The painted figure is a tool. The performance is the shadow of it.
Where he leaves us
I wish HoM Haute would create several perfumes based on the story of Wayang Kulit.
Noted, and filed. Somewhere between the charcoal, the jasmine and the rain there is a bottle in this, and Halim has already done the hardest part, which is remembering it precisely.
Interview 44 · Halim Widyawardhana · Bengkulu · 2026 · Photographs supplied by the subject
